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THE KEY 


LOGE 


STUDY OF ST. THOMAS 


FROM THE ITALIAN OF 
MSGR. FRANCESCO OLGIATI, D.D., PH.D. 


Professor of Metaphysics at the University of the 
Sacred Heart, Milan 


WITH A LETTER OF APPROBATION FROM 
HIS HOLINESS POPE PIUS XI 


TRANSLATED 
BY 


JOHN S. ZYBURA 


B HERDER, BOOK CO. 


17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS, MO. 
AND 


33 QUEEN SQUARE, LONDON, W.C. 1. 
1925 


Copyright 1925 
by B. HERDER BOOK CO. 


NIHIL OBSTAT 


Sti. Ludovict, die 21. Oct. 1925 
F. G. Holweck, 


Censor Librorum 


IMPRIMATUR 


Sti. Ludovict, die 24. Oct. 1925 
+k Joannes J. Glennon, 


Archiepiscopus 


All Rights Reserved 
Printed in U. S. A, 


THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS 
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 


CONTENTS 


THE Hoty FATHER’s APPROVAL OF THE ORIGINAL 
TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD 
INTRODUCTION 


CHAPTER I. THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS . 


1. The Roots of the Thomistic Synthesis . 
2. The Aspiration of St. Thomas 
3. Origins of the Life-Giving Idea 


CHAPTER II. “BEING’ IN THE METAPHYSICS OF 
St. THOMAS 


ihe Sctence of Being as Gna. 

withe Conquest ob Being; . >. 

St. Thomas and the Validity of Our 
Knowledge . ; 

. The Problem of Universals 

Whe Scone of St. Thomas 

. Conclusion 


Orn S&S WN H 


CHAPTER III. BEING IN THE THEODICY OF ST. 
THOMAS . ; ales alae 
1. The Existence of God 
2. The Nature of God. 
3. Creation : 
4. Divine Government . 


PAGE 
i 
il 


iv 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
CHAPTER IV. BEING IN THE OTHER PARTS OF 
THOMISTIC, PHILOSOPHY (). Oya g-tt ia see 


DAO ste SNES hse Av ums eae cr 
2. Psychology (43 eihes 0 ents oye 
3S Ethics o505 0. AU es ives veep ts a 


CHAPTER V. BEING AND THE INTELLECTUALISM 
Orv ST: LHOMAS). 1.002) a 


. St. Thomas’ the Intellectualisty~ 3)) eee 
The Limits of Thomistic Intellectualism . 118 
St. Thomas and the Knowledge of the In- 
dividual and*of History i lee 
4. Being and the Knowledge of Being . . 18F 


seo 


CHAPTER VI. BEING IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. 
Tuomas (FAITH AND REASON) . . . . 140 


WON CLUSION 1) 3 1)..5'1) Veupie biales Ceytube tlie ite ale manunra 


THE HOLY FATHER’S APPROBATION OF THE 
ORIGINAL 


SECRETARIAT OF STATE 
oF His Hotness 
The Vatican, 
March 20, 1923 
Illustrious Sir: 


The Holy Father has gratefully accepted the homage of 
your work entitled, L’Anima di San Tommaso, and has en- 
trusted to me the pleasant task of conveying to you his 
heartfelt thanks. 

I likewise rejoice in being able to assure you that His 
Holiness was pleased to admire your fine and important pub- 
lication and to express his deep satisfaction that to your 
preceding writings of an apologetic, moral, and literary 
character, you have added this new and powerful work of 
philosophic synthesis, which, while doing honor to Aquinas, 
illustrates his thought in contrast with modern errors. By 
this work you likewise honor the Catholic University of 
which you are such a highly esteemed professor, by always 
placing at the service of Christian culture and learning the 
fruits—by no means slight nor immature—of your vigorous 
studies and intelligence. 

As a sure token of these sentiments of His sovereign good 
pleasure and benevolence the august Pontiff heartily imparts 
to you the Apostolic Blessing. 


With assurances of highest esteem, 
Yours most affectionately, 


P. CARDINAL GASPARRI, 

Secretary of State to 
His Holiness Pope Pius XI. 
i 


TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD 


The revival of interest in Scholasticism in gen- 
eral, and Thomism in particular, is growing apace 
also among thinkers of the English-speaking world. 
This fact prompted the present rendition of a work 
hailed by competent critics as a luminous introduc- 
tion to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, in all 
its wealth and depth and vitality. Professor Olgi- 
ati’s excellent monograph? gives us the master-key 
to every part of the imposing and harmonious struc- 
ture of perennial ideas reared by the synthetic 
genius of the Prince of Scholastics. 

A like unbiassed appraisal is made by the reviewer 
of the original, Professor A. E. Taylor, of Edin- 
burgh University, in Mind (April, 1924, p. 217): 
“Tt is an exceptionally well-written and clear exposi- 
tion of the notion of ‘being’ which lies at the root of 
the whole Thomist philosophy. I could warmly 
recommend it to any one who is trying to make him- 
self acquainted with the central thought of Thomism 
and wishes for a lucid introduction.” 

1L’Anima di S. Tommaso. Saggio Filosofico Intorno Alla 
Concezione Tomuista (Societa Editrice “Vita e Pensiero,” 


Milano, 1923). 
ii 


TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD 


The translation was submitted to the author and 
approved by him in the following terms: 

“T am very grateful for your excellent translation 
of my philosophical essay on St. Thomas Aquinas. 
While deeply appreciating its marvelous fidelity to 
the original, I equally admire its discerning and ele- 
gant diction. My work purposes to be a key that 
may perhaps be of service to those who wish to open 
the portals of the medieval castle constructed by the 
immortal thinker, and subsequently to inspect it and 
eventually to take possession of it. Your fine trans- 
lation aims to present this key to the English- 
speaking public. I heartily wish that it may lead 
to a deeper knowledge and love of the great genius 
who, like a sun, sheds such lustre on the thirteenth 
century.” 

eS VBURA 
Colorado Springs, Colo. 
Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, 1925. 


iii 


INTRODUCTION 


The Neo-Scholastic movement, so successfully 
launched by the encyclical Aetermi Patris of Leo 
XIII, has continued to flourish in various countries 
during these last decades, and has given a marvelous 
impetus to the earnest and profound study of St. 
Thomas Aquinas. Works like those of Sertillanges, 
Grabmann, Pégues, De Wulf, Baumgartner, Baeum- 
ker, Amato Masnovo, Garrigou-Lagrange, and many 
others, are a credit to the Catholic scholarship of to- 
day. The critical editions of the works of Aquinas, 
the diligent and accurate commentaries on his 
Summa Theologica, the systematic treatises and ex- 
positions of his doctrines in the domain of philosophy 
and theology alike, have gone on multiplying and so 
diffusing knowledge of Thomistic thought every- 
where. A host of publications, for and against St. 
Thomas, has served to acquaint our contemporaries 
with the leading problems that occupied the soul of 
this great thinker. 

In the greater part of these recent works on St. 
Thomas Aquinas one notes a preference for the 
analytic method. To be sure, this method had its 


merits. It was necessary to call attention to the 
iv 


INTRODUCTION 


theses, the theories, the several parts of the system, 
just as when seeking to make a person known, we 
begin by describing his life with its most noteworthy 
facts and salient exploits, as well as its most minute 
episodes and many seemingly negligible details. 
Every point of the Thomistic conception is scru- 
tinized, illumined, discussed. After the manner of 
hardy explorers, the students of St. Thomas, in their 
loving solicitude to trace its lines with due precision, 
have not overlooked a single outskirt of this hallowed 
ground. 

Hitherto, however, the synthetic method has not 
received the attention it deserves. It would seem 
that after the painstaking and valuable researches 
along the way of analysis, not enough stress has 
been laid on pointing out to the men of our age the 
wonderful unity of the whole system. Frequently, 
even in otherwise eminent and learned works, the 
manifold doctrines engross the reader’s attention 
without making him feel the beauty and vibration 
of the one and only spirit that breathes life into 
the whole. So it happens that many, especially 
among its opponents, imagine they have understood 
Thomism, the while as a matter of fact the soul of 
St. Thomas eludes their grasp. 

The historic sense certainly never had such 
ardent panegyrists as to-day. And yet it does not 


abound in the matter-of-fact domain of practical 
Vv 


INTRODUCTION 


applications. One needs but to open certain hand- 
books of the history of philosophy to get a clear 
and painful impression of the downright lack of 
that indispensable insight which knows how to lay 
hold of unity in multiplicity—a unity, that is, which 
is living, dynamic, synthesizing the various phases 
of an idea or a system within the continuity of a 
gradual development. As a result, the history of 
philosophy becomes a collection of medallions, a 
whirling dance of conceptions that follow and chase 
one another and take their turn with changing 
fortune and capricious unreasonableness. It is true 
that the individual philosophers are portrayed with 
a wealth of biographical and bibliographical infor- 
mation, together with a list of the doctrines they 
champion in logic, metaphysics, ethics, and so on. 
But not even a question is put as to the link that 
binds the parts of the system together, as to the 
interpenetration that exists between the diverse 
theories. Too often we lose sight of the truth that 
tf small minds have many ideas and but little light,— 
their consciousness may be likened to a market-place, 
where the most discordant thoughts pass to and fro, 
prating, shouting, exchanging places and grouping 
themselves with more or less disorder,—great minds, 
instead, have but one idea with an abundance of 
light. 

The varied richness of the problems discussed, 

V1 


INTRODUCTION 


the great number of the conclusions reached, the 
very efforts put forth to solve doubts, detract nothing 
from the unity of an organic system; they are 
rather the matter, the atoms to which one single 
soul knows how to give form and _ inspiration. 
There is one vital principle fashioning the manifold 
branches and the several parts of the one conception 
into a single organism. And it is the immanent 
logic of truth and error alike that causes philosophic 
systems to unfold themselves. Hence, to the eye 
that looks beneath the surface, they no longer ap- 
pear as scattered bits of a casual explanation, but 
as gathered up within the progressive evolvement of 
the original germs. 

The most profound Thomistic scholars, from 
Liberatore to Zigliara, from Lepidi to Garrigou- 
Lagrange, have understood with admirable insight 
that St. Thomas must needs be pondered after this 
fashion, that is, in the light of the most perfect 
systematic unity; and this all the more because he 
is the most daring synthetic genius known to pre- 
modern philosophy and, indeed, to all history. A 
synthesis, however, is inconceivable without one in- 
spiring principle. And it is precisely the aim of this 
my modest effort to take up again and develop this 
method of our more eminent masters, so as to co- 
ordinate the partial truths of the Thomistic concep- 


tion under a single idea, which is at once the soul 
Vil 


INTRODUCTION 


of St. Thomas and the supreme explanation of his 
immortal synthesis. 

The focal center where all rays of the Thomistic 
system meet and from which they radiate, is being, as 
Cardinal Zigliara rightly pointed out. Whatever 
problems were faced by St. Thomas,—from the 
questions of metaphysics to those of theodicy, from 
the objectivity of knowledge to the relations between 
reason and faith,—all become clarified by a new 
light, adds Garrigou-Lagrange, and find their solu- 
tion in a constant reduction to being. In the onto- 
logical order nothing exists or can exist that is not 
being. In the field of knowledge nothing is con- 
ceivable except through the mediation of being. 
Being is the idea capable of explaining that innermost 
harmony which, according to Rudolf Eucken, per- 
meates the work of St. Thomas. 

It has been said that by his Summae Aquinas 
reared a magnificent edifice toward the azure of 
the medieval heavens. We shall establish,—and the 
fact will be of paramount value from the viewpoint 
of history, philosophy, methodology,—that being, 
like a light flooding this edifice, enables us to note 
amid the sumptuous and artistic riches of this vast 
and imposing structure, only one architectonic line, 
worthy of the profound simplicity and consummate 
unity that characterize the genius of St. Thomas. 


Vili 


The Key to the Study 
of St. Thomas 


Cra Lit tael 
THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


In his Geschichte des Idealismus (Vol. III, p. 
458) Otto Willmann likens the mind of St. Thomas 
“to a lake-basin that absorbs the waters streaming in 
from every quarter, lets sink whatever of rubbish 
they bring along, so that the surface forms a clear 
and tranquil mirror in which the blue vault of heaven 
is solemnly reflected.’”’, Another writer, while perus- 
ing the Summa Theologica, with the well-ordered 
arrangement of its three parts, 38 treatises, 631 ques- 
tions, 3000 articles, and 10,000 objections, received 
the impression of strolling through a forest, in the 
calm of a serene dawn, where the singing of all the 
birds,—the voices of all preceding thinkers,—are 
blended into one harmonious whole. 

That Thomism is a synthesis no one can doubt. 
In the encyclical cited, Leo XIII praised St. Thomas 

I 


2 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


because “he collected together, fashioned into one 
whole, and arranged in wonderful order the doctrines 
[of his illustrious predecessors] which had been like 
the scattered members of a body.” On this point he 
agrees with Giovanni Gentile, who in his study on 
I Problemi della Scolastica e il Pensiero Italiano, 
recognizes Aquinas as “the greatest speculative intel- 
lect of the whole thirteenth century.” 

It is of supreme importance to call to mind the 
roots of this gigantic tree and the manner in which 
St. Thomas set about to synthesize the entire specu- 
lation that had flourished before his time. 


1. The Roots of the Thomistic Synthesis 


We must not imagine that the University of 
Paris, where St. Thomas taught for several years, or 
the age in which he lived, surrounded the efforts of 
the thinker with an atmosphere of tranquillity. The 
Thomistic synthesis grew up amid the keenest and 
most passionate agitations, which were in a measure 
the occasion of its birth. 

The Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, for 
which the historian is indebted to Denifle and Chate- 
lain, enables us to follow the rancorous conflicts be- 
tween the professors from the secular clergy and 
those from the religious Orders,—conflicts inter- 
woven with such fierce clashes between the students 
that the Holy See was obliged to intervene. In the 


ROO bssOryLHOMIS TIC SYN EHESIS (3 


pages of Lemmens, St. Bonaventure we have the 
description of a veritable whirlwind let loose against 
the Dominicans and Franciscans, and a presentment 
of the difficulties that had to be overcome before 
St. Thomas and his saintly friend could be numbered 
among the teachers. It may well be that such 
storms are reducible to the squabbles of monks or 
the cross purposes of petty jealousies; but we feel 
that beneath the agitated surface of this tempestuous 
sea there is latent a formidable clashing of ideas. 
That was the time when one side and the other gave 
battle with the most intense eagerness. An incident 
mpthe lite of Albert the ‘Great~is a ‘case; in point: 
after the death of his eminent pupil he does not 
hesitate, despite his advanced years, to face the long 
journey from Cologne to Paris for the purpose of 
defending certain theses of St. Thomas Aquinas. 
It was the age when the violent collision of currents 
indicated that the hour had come for a solution which 
would facilitate the definitive synthesis by temper- 
ing the just demands of all. 

As Heitz aptly remarks in his Essar Historique 
sur les Rapports entre la Philosophie et la Foi de 
Bérenger de Tours a Saint Thomas d’ Aquin, certain 
vigorous tendencies of thought could then be dis- 
tinguished. 

First of all, there was Augustiman Platonism, 
well disciplined for battle, jealous heir of the theories 


4. THE PROGRAMME OR Y5I¢ a) TiO Wis 


of St. Augustine, who was acclaimed as the supreme 
master not only in theology, but also in philosophy. 
These followers of St. Augustine utilized only bits 
of Aristotle without, however, catching his spirit. 
Ehrle, in his book, Der Augustinismus und der An- 
stotelismus in der Scholastik gegen Ende des XIII. 
Jahrhunderts, has shown how deeply Augustinianism 
was rooted at this time. William of Auxerre, 
William of Auvergne, and St. Bonaventure, to- 
gether with the Franciscan Order, were the cham- 
pions of this movement, noted especially for its 
Neo-Platonic theory of knowledge and the divine 
illumination of the soul. 

By the side of the Augustinians, says Heitz, we 
meet another group of a rather positive bent, devoted 
chiefly to the cultivation of the natural sciences, 
mathematics, and erudition. While professing sin- 
cere admiration for Aristotle as a naturalist, it 
followed the paths of Platonism when occupied with 
philosophico-theological problems. We may call this 
the current of the Augustiman Empiricists. Later, 
Roger Bacon became its most famous representative. 

About 1260, a new doctrinal movement was 
inaugurated at the University of Paris. To under- 
stand it, one must not overlook the fact that 
the hitherto unknown books of Aristotle were now 
brought to light and began to be studied, more 
especially under the influence of Arabic culture, 


ROOTS OF THOMISTIC: SYNTHESIS 45 


which, among others, had had a famous Aristotelian 
commentator in Averroés. From this writer, who 
was their source of inspiration, a Parisian group, 
small in number, but very turbulent, called itself 
Averroists. Mandonnet’s classic monograph on 
Siger de Brabant et l Averroisme Latin au XIII° 
Siécle gives an excellent exposition of this current of 
thought. Following in the footsteps of Averroes, 
Siger of Brabant and his friends sponsored doctrines 
contrary to such dogmas as free-will and Providence, 
and especially the theory of the numerical oneness 
of the intellectual soul in all men. Subsequently, to 
save themselves from ecclesiastical fulminations, they 
resorted to the subterfuge of the double truth. 

Though condemned by the Church, this arbitrary 
interpretation of Aristotelianism brought about a 
veritable revolution in the world of culture. One 
could escape neither the powerful influence of this 
new spirit, nor the richness of the material it offered, 
nor the perfection of its scientific technique. The 
situation, as Seeberg says, was similar to that follow- 
ing the invention of new methods and weapons of 
defense: henceforth no one can make war without 
enlisting them in his service. 

Amid the clashing of so many conceptions, there 
were some who cloaked their ignorance with the 
mantle of mysticism and hurled their missiles of 
scorn against philosophy, deeming it useless and even 


6 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


harmful to religion. They were the men whom AI- 
bert the Great described, by a phrase not at all 
complimentary, as bruta ammantia, blasphemantes 
im ws quae ignorant. 

Others had recourse to the dangerous policy of 
condemnation. A provincial council of Sens, recon- 
vened at Paris in 1210, had struck a blow at the 
Physics and Metaphysics of the Stagirite. In 1231, 
Gregory IX moderated the verdict and announced a 
provisional prohibition until these books should be 
corrected. In 1277, these measures had their after- 
math in the condemnation hurled against some theses 
of St. Thomas by Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, 
and by Robert Kilwardby, archbishop of Canterbury. 
Such a policy, however, could have no success worthy 
of note. 

It was Christian Aristotelianism that saved the sit-_ 
uation. Initiated at Cologne by Albert of Bollstaedt, 
it was perfected by his great pupil St. Thomas. The 
former utilized Aristotle, as Sertillanges happily puts 
it in his excellent monograph on Saimt Thomas 
d’Aquin, and united him to Plato. The latter, ab- 
sorbing all the vital germs of Augustinianism, plant- 
ing himself on the same Aristotelian ground with the 
Averroists, having the greatest respect for experience 
and the demands of true mysticism, feeling pro- 
foundly the encyclopedic and popularizing preoccupa- 
tions of his teacher Albert, assimilated Aristotle and 


Pith PIRATION ObySTTrHOMAS 7 


summed up in an organic synthesis the results of all 
preceding speculation in philosophy and theology. 

Working with a scientific method and guided by 
strictly objective criteria, with the clearly stated pro- 
gramme of “not allowing himself to be led by sym- 
pathy or aversion for anyone whose opinions he used 
or refuted, but by the certainty of truth,’ with the 
tenacity of a calm and lucid thinker, without lyrical 
digressions or sentimental flights, Thomas Aquinas 
succeeded in achieving,—as De Ruggiero acknowl- 
edges in his Storia della Filosofia,—‘that type of 
pure science, admirable for its transparent logic and 
for the organic connection of its parts, which his 
Greek predecessor was the first to found.” 


2. The Aspiration of St. Thomas 


In the third volume of his Dogmengeschichte, 
Adolph Harnack has brought out in strong relief the 
fact that, while Scholasticism was rounding out its 
synthesis in the field of thought, the Church was 
engaged in the same task in the various concerns of 
human life. This is quite true, and it points to the 
outstanding characteristic of the Middle Ages.* 
In vain do we look for it in other centuries, in 
which we find none of that magnificence of system- 
atic conceptions or organic visions. In that epoch 


1Cfir. Maurice De Wulf, Philosophy and Civilization in 
the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 1922). (Tr.) 


6 sPHE PROGRAMME OPV ST. PHOMAS 


everything appeared as forming a part of this rich 
and living unity. And if St. Thomas is the rep- 
resentative of these times, it is because of that 
synthesis which constituted his unceasing preoccupa- 
tion and steadfast programme. He synthesized all 
the thought that had gone before; he embraced all 
reality, natural and supernatural; he achieved a 
happy harmony in his own life. In a word, St. 
Thomas was the synthetic genius par excellence. 

As in Aristotle, so in him, the historic sense was 
vivid. In De Anima (I, I. 2) he bids us “give ear 
to the opinions of the ancients, whatever they may 
be, because of a twofold usefulness to be derived 
therefrom: to make our own whatever of good they 
have said, and to shun what they have said mis- 
takenly.”’ And in his commentary on Aristotle’s 
Metaphysics (IH, lib. 1) he says: “The exami- 
nation of preceding authors is necessary for clear- 
ing up problems and solving doubts. As in a trial 
no one can pronounce sentence without having heard 
the reasons of both sides, so it is necessary that he 
who is occupied with philosophy hear the reasons and 
doubts adduced to the contrary by the adversaries, 
in order to form a strictly scientific judgment.” 

This criterion St. Thomas not only stated, but 
loyally followed. In his works the historian of 
philosophy can discover not only treasures of in- 


oP ASPIRATION OFsT. THOMAS’ "9 


formation and ideas, but above all the method to 
be followed. Besides, the very technique of Scho- 
lastic exposition with the Videtur quod, that is, the 
statement of hostile theories, was favorable to that 
orderly procedure which in St. Thomas Aquinas 
took on an exquisiteness quite remarkable for those 
times. Thus, for his Aristotelian studies he was 
not satisfied with the Latin version made from the 
Arabic: to have a reliable text of Aristotle, he pre- 
vailed on William of Moerbeke, his friend and con- 
frere, who was a good linguist, to make a Latin 
version of the Stagirite’s works on physics, meta- 
physics, and ethics, directly from the Greek. And 
this was done,—as he notes in De Coelo et Mundo 
(I, lib. 22), not merely in order to ascertain what 
others had thought, but to get at the truth. He 
well understood that the historical statement of 
problems is an indispensable requisite for the at- 
tainment and progress of truth. 

Hence, the synthesis of the conceptions of the 
past must have occurred quite spontaneously to his 
mind. In the process of actualizing it, he ever 
maintained an admirable serenity and a state of 
mind that at times urged him to excessive benignity 
in interpreting different thinkers. And so he who 
should have been an antagonist of Augustinian 
Platonism, not only quoted St. Augustine with the 


10 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


greatest veneration,’ but also, as von Hertling 
has noted, took over from the writers opposed to 
him a goodly number of important doctrines (for 
instance, that in God thought is identified with be- 
ing, that He alone can create, that conservation is 
a continued creation), and accepted the theories of 
exemplarism, of Providence, of miracle, of evil, of 
the immateriality of the soul, and so on. Not 
only did he seek to cover with all possible courtesy 
the exaggerated spiritualism of the bishop of Hippo, 
so as to attenuate its opposition to the peripatetic 
doctrines, but when treating of Aristotle, he did 
not hesitate to take a contrary position on questions 
in which he did not find him consonant with truth. 
Fully independent in judgment, equal, nay superior 
in intellectual acumen and comprehension to the 
greatest geniuses of humanity, he discovered new 
paths of truth and was not afraid of novelty in his 
synthetic work. This is shown clearly by his accu- 
rate biographer, William of Tours, who found in his 
teaching “new questions,” a “new and lucid method 
of research and scientific solutions,” “new argu- 
ments” in his demonstrations, “new doctrines and 
principles,” by means of which he solved doubts and 
difficulties. It is true that Thomas took the material 
for his synthesis from all preceding philosophers; 


1JTn the first part of the Summa Theologica the writings 
of St. Augustine are cited 550 times. (Tr.) 


THE ASPIRATION OF ST. THOMAS 11 


but it is equally true, as will be amply shown, that he 
endowed his work with a genuine and luminous 
originality. 

This work not only recapitulated and perfected 
the results of the culture hitherto achieved, but was 
extended so as to embrace all reality. The relations 
between metaphysics and dogma, faith and philoso- 
phy, the natural and the supernatural, were defini- 
tively and lucidly determined by St. Thomas, inas- 
much as the two domains,—especially in his two 
Summae,—were harmoniously blended together, 
while remaining formally distinct. 

A modern philosopher, Rudolf Eucken, though 
hostile to Neo-Thomism, well delineates this guiding 
concept of Aquinas when he writes in his Lebens- 
anschauungen grosser Denker that, for St. Thomas, 
“every degree of reality has its own law. Even the 
lowest grade must have the power to develop accord- 
ing to its particular character, without being dis- 
turbed by the higher ones. As there is a special 
kingdom of nature, so there is a recognition of the 
autonomous task of natural knowledge; and the 
appeal to God in special scientific questions 1s con- 
demned as a refuge of ignorance (asylum igno- 
rantiae). But every inferior grade must needs con- 
fine itself within its own limits, and not presume to 
intrude upon the higher spheres. The kingdom 
of nature merely sketches what the kingdom of 


12 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


grace, the world of Christianity, confirms and de- 
velops. . . . Hence autonomy does not exclude 
subordination, and the division of the domains is 
completed by their being brought into harmony 
within a more comprehensive totality. Then, above 
the kingdom of historical Revelation there towers 
another grade: the immediate union with God... 
the kingdom of glory. ... This gradation seems 
to have solved the problem of reconciling all human 
finalities and of recognizing for every domain its 
proper law, without endangering the unity and order 
of the whole. ... This work called for a truly 
extraordinary power of synthesis and an equally 
great ability in the use of logic. In this Thomas 
attained true greatness.” 

Another factor aided St. Thomas to reach such 
heights: he realized in his own life the harmony 
visioned in his speculation. The sacrifice of his 
entire self to truth was not in vain. The thoughtful 
recollection as part of a holy life, the prolific inspi- 
rations of prayer, the unruffled tranquillity of medi- 
tation, the lectures of Albert the Great, the absorb- 
ing interest of teaching and disputation,—all these 
factors contributed to make him impervious to the 
trivial happenings of every-day life, and enabled 
him to soar boldly into a higher world, where the 
sweep of his vision could embrace the vastest 
horizons. 


iro WA LION Ole Sly UTIONA S013 


One of his biographers, Guglielmo da Tocco, re- 
lates that St. Thomas one day, while sitting at table 
with St. Louis, King of France, wholly absorbed 
in his own thoughts, quite forgot the illustri- 
ous personages with whom he was dining. All at 
once he struck the table and exclaimed: ‘At last 
I have found the decisive argument against the 
Manicheans!”’ This incident, says Grabmann in 
his fine essay on Thomas von Aquin, induced the 
superiors of the Dominican Order to give him 
Reginaldo da Piperno as a companion, to take care 
of him and to see to it that he did not forget to 
partake of the necessary food and drink, or neglect 
the demands of practical life. 

Study and the disinterested investigation of truth, 
—such was the supreme purpose of “the good friar 
Thomas,’ as Dante calls him in the Conwmvio. 
Through this complete sacrifice of self he became 
the ‘Prince of Scholastics” and remains to-day the 
Master of the Catholic world. In him the immacu- 
late purity of soul, which Plato required as a con- 
dition sine qua non for attaining wisdom, was 
joined to keenness and depth of mind. The writer 
of the Contra Gentiles was capable of composing the 
Office for the Feast of Corpus Christi and of present- 
ing to the Church those sublime Eucharistic hymns 
which are still in use in our liturgy. This philoso- 
pher and theologian was a saint, and a great saint. 


14 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


This ardent admirer of Aristotle, having been 
stricken by illness on his way to the Council of 
Lyons, died, surrounded by monks, at Fossanuova, 
—died commenting on the Canticle of Canticles! 
The programme of the synthesis in culture, in the 
grades of reality, in life, has never been more splen- 
didly realized. Henceforth one will search history 
in vain for a man» who in this respect can rival 
Thomas Aquinas. 


3. Origins of the Life-Giving Idea 


The simple and inexhaustibly prolific idea of 
which St. Thomas availed himself to vivify his 
conception, and which breathed life into the rich 
materials he had collected was, as I have stated, the 
idea of being. In the following pages this assertion 
will be amply substantiated. 

There is one point, however, which is too easily 
passed over, even by many of those who recognize in 
being the life-giving idea of Thomism. And it is 
this: being, as conceived by St. Thomas, is the up- 
shot of all the speculation from the beginning of 
Greek philosophy down to his own time. It is the 
last flower on the plant of pre-modern thought. 

When the Greeks pass on from the mythological 
explanation of the universe to the scientific vision 
of it, the problem which at once confronts them is 
that of beig, or reality. And this is likewise one 


ORIGINS OF THE LIFE-GIVING IDEA 15 


of the first concepts to receive elaboration; indeed, 
it is the fundamental concept, inasmuch as becoming, 
with the Greeks, always concerns that which exists, 
and for them the act of knowing is never endowed 
with a creative power ;—it does but mirror being, or 
seeks to do so. 

But for the Ionic, Pythagorean, and Eleatic 
school, for Heraclitus, Empedocles, Leucippus, and 
Democritus, for Anaxagoras himself, the reality to 
be explained is nature, the natural object, and re- 
course is had to air, water, fire, atoms, vovs, with 
a view to solving the problem. 

At first glance it would seem that with the Soph- 
ists the orientation of philosophic research under- 
goes a complete change. Sceptical doubt culminates 
in the total negation of truth, of ethics, of religion. 
For the co¢ot being is unknowable. Man, accord- 
ing to a phrase of Protagoras, is the measure of all 
things. Sophistic dialectic and eristic buffooneries 
seem about to overthrow, for good and all, the set-. 
ting of the problem of being; for, given the sub- 
jectivity of our perceptions, the knowledge of reality 
becomes impossible. 

It cannot be denied that the Sophists brought 
about a displacement of the center of gravity in 
speculation. From the investigation of nature 
philosophy passes to the examination of the subject, 
but it goes no further than its surface, and loses it- 


16 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


self in the whirlwind of the external phenomena of 
the ego. 

It was then necessary to probe deeper. The sub- 
ject is not to be considered merely from the side of 
its surface life. And Socrates comes with the 
admonition: ““Know thyself.’ Here we have 
a programme that plants itself within the very po- 
sition of the Sophists, but progresses in the direction 
of the interior life. This life, when accurately ex- 
amined, yields to Socrates the joy of his great dis- 
covery, the concept, the basis of science and knowl- 
edge, as the norm available to all, overcoming and 
disproving the relativism of Gorgias and Protag- 
oras. 

Socrates divided things into two classes—divine 
and human. And it must be admitted that, as re- 
gards the first (ra Sada), the formation of the 
world, being in itself, he is like unto the Sophists in 
pronouncing the hopeless verdict of tgnoramus, 
scarcely softened by the feeble ray of Sofa, or 
opinion. Science (émorhun) concerns itself only 
with human things (Ta avOporea), that is to say, 
with what is just and unjust, pious and impious, 
beautiful and ugly,—in a word, with the ordi- 
nary ways and affairs of man. Here it is that 
Socrates sees the concept sprouting as something 
constant, immutable, universal, asserting its sover- 
eignty, bringing the will under its sway, and en- 


ORIGINS OF THE LIFE-GIVING IDEA 17 


abling men to found their lives and conduct on 
absolute truth. 

Such a position, precious though it be for its recog- 
nition of the validity of thought in itself, does not 
allow, at least in theory, of the study of being. In 
reality, however, Socrates himself made use of the 
concept also in the field he had defined as inaccessi- 
ble; and though failing to solve with it “the geome- 
try of fleas’ (such was the reproach of an adver- 
sary), he none the less discussed the problem of the 
finality of the universe. 

With Plato the Socratic concept takes on the form 
of idea, and the Platonic idea not only hails con- 
ceptual knowledge as absolute and perfect knowl- 
edge, it not only extends the reign of the concept— 
hitherto confined within the limits of human conduct, 
—to all reality, but it inaugurates metaphysics, the 
metaphysics of ideas, to which it attributes not only 
logical, but also ontological validity, and calls forth 
the well-known dualisms,—so acute and embarrass- 
ing,—in the domain of knowledge, of ethics, and 
especially of metaphysics. 

Two worlds were now facing each other: on the 
one hand was the world of ideas, of ovoia, of perfect 
reality, of the universal existing as such; on the 
other, the world of “becoming,” of relativity, of 
changeableness, of imperfection, of yérveois, of the in- 
dividual. | 


18 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


For Plato, ideas are the true being,—ideas not 
atomistically separated, but organically connected 
“by bonds stronger than the diamond.” Further- 
more, for him all ideas are essential determinations 
of the idea of being, whose internal principle of 
specification is the idea of the good, the sun of the 
world of the invisible, the fountainhead of all being. 

In vain does Plato seek to bridge the abyss that 
separates these two worlds. The universal never 
makes contact with the particular, but remains an 
independent prototype. The theory of separated 
ideas ruthlessly splits reality into two camps; it 
throws a sinister light on one part of it and reduces 
it to an empty shadow, imperfect and worthy of 
contempt. 

The Aristotelian revolution consists in bringing 
about a union of the two worlds. Aristotle vigor- 
ously combats the doctrine of separated ideas. He 
makes the ideas come down from heaven to earth, 
and puts them into the very current of reality. For 
Aristotle the universal is immanent in the individual : 
ideas operate in things as forces directing the proc- 
ess of “becoming” and making it intelligible or 
rational. The Socratic concept, after evolving into 
the Platonic idea, thus becomes,—in contraposition 
to matter,—the Aristotelian form, the soul of the 
whole philosophy of the Stagirite. 

Every part, or better, every member of the Aristo- 


ORIGINS OF THE LIFE-GIVING IDEA 19 


telian system, is to be regarded from the viewpoint 
of entelechy as the master-key to the entire edifice. 
The doctrine of the form explains for Aristotle the 
object of metaphysics and the causes of being, that 
is to say, it solves the problem of being. ‘“Be- 
coming,’ or the passage from potency to act in 
matter, is to be interpreted in function of the form, 
because that which is produced anew is a form, and 
that by means of which a new form is produced 
is the activity of another form. The same holds 
true of finality, inasmuch as intrinsic finality is 
identified with the substantial form of the specific 
type. [Extrinsic finality implies the hierarchy and 
the relations between the forms. ‘Transcendent 
finality implies the pure form, perfect, immobile, and 
moving all other forms. 

In this conception the real becomes intelligible, 
or, in the language of the moderns, rational. Our 
knowledge is a knowledge of forms and acquired 
through forms,’ and for that reason grasps the unt- 
versal in the individual, the intelligible in the sensible, 
the law in the fact, the reason and possibility of 
being in being. Here, then, we have a science of 
being as being, and of the principles of being,—in 
other words, metaphysics as the science of reality, to 
which the pre-Socratic philosophers had turned their 


1Cfr. Eidologie, oder Philosophie als Formerkenntnis, von 
Dr. Joseph Geyser (Freiburg i. B., 1924). (Tr.) 


20 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


investigations. It is the science that has been 
achieved through a slow but uninterrupted develop- 
ment, across the crisis of Sophistic scepticism and 
the contributions of Socrates and Plato. It is no 
longer merely the dialectic of the concept, or the 
metaphysics of distant ideas exulting on inaccessible 
summits; it is, at last, the very metaphysic of being. 

However, in this Aristotelian metaphysic, domi- 
nated by the conception of the form, there remains 
a field of being not yet cleared up. It is that of 
uncreated matter, of the individual, with its principle 
of individuation in matter, and of history. With 
St. Augustine new progress is made. Through the 
idea of truth, the synthesis of all Augustinian specu- 
lation, every part of reality becomes intelligible. 
Primal matter, too, as created by God, the individual 
and history as being under the influence of Provi- 
dence and despite the difficulties raised by the prob- 
lem of evil,—in a word, everything that exists is 
a reflection of the eternal Truth. Nature, ideas, 
things and their essential reasons, the single beings, 
the vicissitudes of history,—all are flooded by this 
light. 

Dazzled by the fascinating vision that flashes on 
him in his wonderful process of interiorizing, 
Augustine, in his ascent of the mount of Truth, 
would fain follow the debatable path that rises from 


ORIGINS OF THE LIFE-GIVING IDEA a1 


the true to the affirmation of the real, and finds in 
logical truth itself the proof of the existence of 
ontological reality, of God and creatures. 

This is not the place to discuss such a procedure, 
which may have aided the great Doctor to throw 
his Christian principle into stronger relief. I con- 
fine myself to pointing out the immense distance 
that had been traversed. 

From the pre-Socratic philosophers down to St. 
Augustine, being and the science of being appear in 
one splendid development, which in this brief sketch 
can be but very imperfectly presented.* It would be 
absurd to break this continuous progress. It would 
be contrary to the philosophical spirit to forget 
that, from the nascent investigation of reality by 
the earliest philosophers, right on to Augustinianism, 
there is a continuity of thought from which it is 
not permissible to prescind. He who would rele- 
gate the concept of Socrates, the idea of Plato, the 
form of Aristotle, the truth of St. Augustine to 
separate compartments,—as though they were not 
phases of one and the same development,—would 
show that he did not understand the history of 

1 The development of the idea of being in ancient philosophy 
will form the subject of a future work, in which I shall show 
the unity of this developing process from the pre-sophists 


down to St. Thomas, as against the opinion of those who 
divide it into a Platonic and an Aristotelian current. 


22 THE PROGRAMME OF ST. THOMAS 


philosophy. In like manner he would miss the truth 
who failed to note how all preceding philosophy was 
a preparation for the Thomistic system. 

Being, according to St. Thomas, is the highest 
peak reached by pre-modern thought. This simple 
word “being” is a germinal idea, the fruit of a long 
and slow preparation, the life-giving principle of a 
new organism. St. Thomas achieved a synthesis, 
not only because of the material he put under con- 
tribution; the very soul of his system bears within 
itself all that had inspired every philosophic genius 
down to his day. To comprehend the being of St. 
Thomas in the full richness of its meaning, it is not 
enough to have recourse to the enlightening com- 
ments of his limpid and profound Latin; one must 
also keep in view the historical development of 
philosophical thought in what was its most essential . 
element, which, like a flaming torch, lights the way 
of every great thinker and is entrusted by him to 
his successor, who is to replenish it and make its 
flame more brilliant, more beautiful, more intense. 


CHAPTER II 
“BEING” IN THE METAPHYSICS OF ST. THOMAS 


BEING, to the mind of St. Thomas, is not some:: 
thing mysterious or obscure. On the contrary, it 
is what our mind knows best and grasps immediately 
in everything. 

As soon as our intellect is aroused and comes in 
contact with reality, the very first object of our 
knowledge, the first concept we form,—no matter 
what the thing that has impinged on our senses,—is 
that of being, of something that is (76 6v). We 
have here an initial, imperfect, confused notion, tell- 
ing us next to nothing about the constituent elements 
of the real, yet, for all that, comprising them all, 
down to their last determinations. Moreover, if we 
penetrate its profound meaning, if we reach down 
to the true reasons of being, this notion, in the most 
universal and analogical unity of its content, becomes 
ever more clear and distinct; it appears “quasz 
quoddam seminarium tottus cognitionts sequentts,”’ 
a kind of nursery of all subsequent cognition, and 
enables us to rise to the very summit of intellectual 

23 


24 BEING 


life, to the perfect Being, and thence to descend again 
to all other beings. 

In the order of knowledge, then, our thought is 
enclosed between two points. At the point of de- 
parture we have an initial cognition of being; at the 
point of arrival we find nothing else than a perfected 
cognition of this same being. In this effort of 
elaboration and attainment I can add nothing to the 
concept of being that is not already implicitly con- 
tained in it. To every generic idea I can add a 
specific difference not included in the genus; not so, 
when the notion of being is in question: though ex- 
pressing what was not formally signified before, I 
never succeed in stating or coming upon something 
that is not being. It was on this that St. Thomas 
founded his doctrine of the analogy of being. The 
notion of being, he argued, is not univocal, it is not 
a genus, it does not indicate realities formally identt- 
cal; and yet, neither does it signify things entirely 
different: it is not an equivocal idea. It is analogi- 
cal, inasmuch as God and creatures, substance and 
accidents, in a word, the most dissimilar realities, 
agree in this that they are beings. 

The same is found to hold good in the ontological 
order. 

“QOuidquid est, si quid est, ens est,’—all that 
exists, if existence, is being, say the followers of 
St. Thomas in unison with.their master. In all 


THE SCIENCE OF BEING 25 


reality, actual or possible, present, past, or future, 
discover, if you can, something to which this 
idea of being does not apply. Strain your imagina- 
tion to the utmost to find something in the domain 
of reality that is not being. Impossible! We can, 
of course, distinguish the various grades of being; 
we can conceive what universally follows upon all 
being. But we cannot even imagine something that 
is not being because the principle of contradiction 
stands in the way. Whether we turn back on our 
consciousness and study ourselves, or direct our 
attention to sensible reality, or by way of reasoning 
come to know “separated substances” (angels) and 
God,—in every grade of reality we find being, some- 
thing that is, something that has existence. 

Here, too, the notion of being presents to us all 
reality united in one single embrace. From Being 
by essence proceed all other beings. In the cog- 
nitive process we take our point of departure from 
being imperfectly grasped to reach a more elaborate 
idea. The contrary process prevails in the onto- 
logical order: here we must start from the most 
perfect Being in order to explain everything that 
exists or can exist. 

The foregoing suffices to point out the motive for 
the very numerous passages in the works of St. 
Thomas,—from the De Veritate to the De Ente et 
Essentia, from the two Sumnae to his commentary 


26 / BEING 


on the Metaphysics of Aristotle,—where this pri- 
macy of being in our intellect and in things existing 
or possible is asserted. “Being is what the intellect 
conceives first, as something most known and into 
which it resolves all conceptions’ (De Veritate, qu. 
I, art. 1). “The intellect naturally knows being 
and whatever essentially belongs to being as such, 
and on this cognition the knowledge of first princi- 
ples “is founded... :°The formal, ‘objects onsite 
intellect is being, just as color is the formal object 
of vision. . . . That under which is comprehended 
whatever the intellect knows ... is nothing else 
than being” (Contra Gentiles, II, c. 83). “What 
is grasped first of all is being, the understanding of 
which is included in every apprehension” (Summa 
Theologica, I, II, qu. 92, art. 2). These quotations 
could easily be multiplied. 


1. The Science of Being as Such 


Given this fundamental conviction, St. Thomas 
had of necessity to prize metaphysics, or “first 
philosophy” as wisdom par excellence, as the culmi- 
nating point of knowledge, precisely because, in the 
definition of Aristotle, this is the science of being 
as such. 

Dr. Grabmann is quite exact when he insists that 
“St. Thomas Aquinas is pre-eminently a metaphysi- 
cal thinker. The profound grasp, further develop- 


THE SCIENCE OF BEING 27 


ment, expert and comprehensive use of the meta- 
physics of Aristotle——also for the penetration of 
the theological content,—is his outstanding achieve- 
ment. His teacher, Albert the Great, had paved 
the way for this work. E. Rolfes calls St. Thomas 
‘the greatest commentator of Aristotle’s Metaphys- 
ics. ‘The metaphysical genius of Aquinas thor- 
oughly dominates his great systematic works; it re- 
veals itself more especially in his teaching on God, 
but is evident also in the strictly theological questions 
on grace, the Incarnation, and the Sacraments. .. . 
It was surely not mere chance that the pupils of 
St. Thomas showed a predilection for metaphysical 
problems.” 

All this, I repeat, is very true. But the inner- 
most reason thereof is to be found in the soul of 
Thomism. He who determined on being as the 
inspiring principle of his system, was led by a logical 
necessity to give preference to the science of being 
as such, and to place it above mathematics, which 
is concerned with reality as subject to quantity; 
above physics, which studies the real in the function 
of motion; above every science whatsoever that 
deals with reality from some determined and specific 
point of view. 

Whether the term “being” signifies the thing, the 
res, essentia, quidditas that is endowed with ex- 
istence, or whether it means existence itself,—actus 


28 BEING 


essendi, the act of existing,—to speak of being in 
metaphysics is always tantamount to speaking of 
reality, that is, of that which exists or can exist. 
The science of being, then, having gained the 
first principles of all being, is applied to every other 
branch of knowledge concerned with real being, 
actual or possible. Wherever reality exists, there 
metaphysics asserts-its sway. It reaches out to all 
beings, and not even Natural Theology is possible 
outside of it, because God, too, is being,—indeed, _ 
He is the Supreme Being. It dominates all the 
sciences and mocks him who would pretend to re- 
pudiate it. In his commentary on the fourth book 
of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, St. Thomas calls at- 
tention to the fact that metaphysics is a branch of 
knowledge indispensable even for those who would 
ignore or actually despise it. Unwittingly all men 
are constrained to occupy themselves with meta- 
physics. For metaphysics treats of reality and the 
fundamental principles of reality, that is, of being. 
Hence he who wished to withdraw from its in- 
fluence, would commit a sort of intellectual suicide. 
He would have to say: “I am speaking, but I am 
not concerned with reality; I am merely amusing 
myself with chimeras.’’ No one can be interested 
in the real and prescind from metaphysics, which 
investigates the supreme laws of the real. No one 
can delude himself with having understood St. 


PHRISCIENGH ORI BEING 29 


Thomas and sincerely repeat the saying that “the 
tiniest pebble, a single fact, is worth more than a 
mountain of syllogisms.”’ In the view of meta- 
physics such a statement is proof positive of a total 
lack of speculative acumen. It is not a question of 
having being on one side and the syllogism on the 
other; but it is metaphysics that gives us being, 
reality, interpreted and comprehended. The differ- 
ence between man and the animal, when they face 
reality, is not based on the material nature of 
sensation and verification; but consists in this, that 
the animal observes and does not understand; 
whereas man proceeds from the observation of real- 
ity to the explanation thereof, he rises from being 
to the reasons of being. 

In this St. Thomas was a loyal follower of Aris- 
totle. He is a peripatetic more on account of the 
mental habit of research and meditation than for 
the sum-total of the doctrines he has taken over 
and embodied in his system. The Stagirite had a 
vivid sense of reality; from experience and obser- 
vation he rose to the philosophical and metaphysical 
interpretation of experiential data, thereby temper- 
ing and welding the demands of empiricism and 
idealism. In like manner, St. Thomas, as the faith- 
ful continuator of the Greek master, always begins 
with the positive observation of things, and then 
proceeds to investigate their nature, causes, and 


30 BEING 


laws. And the merit of this method cannot be 
calmly appraised except by one who reflects that in 
the thirteenth century quite a different road was 
followed by the Augustinian school. 


2. The Conquest of Being 


It cannot be denied that the mind that ponders 
the writings of St. Augustine is deeply stirred and 
enrapt by admiration. His metaphysics of truth 
fills us with enthusiasm. The world takes on a 
value quite different from that with which the com- 
mon man invests it. Everything proclaims and 
chants the beauty of that Truth of which earthly 
being is but a pallid ray. And yet, the mind does 
not rest tranquil, the Augustinian process for com- 
passing truth does not satisfy it. The main line 
of the great Doctor’s reasoning,—which mounts 
to the supreme Truth and self-existent Being from 
the eternal, immutable, and perfect truths existing 
in our mind,—dazzles indeed, but does not con- 
vince and is anything but safe. Christianity, with 
its concept of Creation and Providence, had fur- 
nished Augustine with the idea of the ontological 
identity of being with truth and goodness, but 
Plato and Plotinus, from whom he drew his in- 
spiration, had not mapped out for him a safe and 
solid road for reaching that summit; rather, they 
had indicated a misleading path. From the idea, 


THE CONQUEST OF BEING 31 


from the notion of truth, Augustine wished to attain 
to Being. By the soarings of his heart and his 
mystic genius he sought to make up for the defects 
of the road upon which he had set out. 

The spell which the interiorizing process of 
Augustine always casts over the reader was soon 
broken. In vain should we look for it in the heat 
of the medieval struggle for and against the eternal 
truths. Sertillanges thus sums up these conflicts: 
Augustine had said that “nothing is more eternal 
than the law of the circle; nothing more eternal than 
that two and three make five. If you destroy 
the things that are true, truth itself will remain, 
added Anselm. Is it perhaps not reasonable to 
assert that universals exist outside of time and space? 
And what is more universal than truth? Of what 
is true to-day it was always true that it would be so, 
and will ever be true that it was so. Even suppos- 
ing that truth had a beginning, or that it perishes, 
nevertheless there always remains this: that in the 
past or supposed future there would be no truth, 
and this itself would be a truth,—so true is it that 
truth is independent of everything and that it is 
eternal.” Therefore Truth exists, that is to say, 
God exists. From the notion of truth the transition 
was made to the affirmation of Being. In this 
manner was realized the great programme: “Do 
not go outside (thyself). Truth abides in the in- 


32 BEING 


terior man. ... And if thou shouldst find thy- 
self changeable, go beyond thyself.” 

Such reasoning, proper to the metaphysics of 
truth, entrained certain consequences as to the origin 
of ideas. 

For Plato, Plotinus, the Neo-Platonists, Augus- 
tine, and the Franciscan school, sensation played no 
ereat part in the attainment of truth. The universal, 
eternal, and immutable character of the latter could 
not, in their view, derive its origin from the indi- 
vidual, temporal, contingent things of sense. The 
external object may arouse the intellectual soul to 
understand, but it can do no more. Between sense 
perception and intellectual knowledge there exists 
merely an extrinsic relation, i. e., that of simple 
juxtaposition. 

If that were so, the activity of the cognitive 
faculty would acquire a great and essential import- 
ance in the genesis of human knowledge. Our 
intellect would not be of a passive and receptive 
character, but the soul would draw up truth from 
the depths of its substance, or it would reach it with 
the intervention of divine aid, or through the 
medium of innate ideas, or by that divine illumi- 
nation of minds so dear to St. Augustine. Such 
were the consequences of proceeding along that peril- 
ous road. 


THE CONQUEST OF BEING 33 


St. Thomas with his metaphysics of being struck 
out in the opposite direction. 

In the first place, he refutes all these hypotheses. 
From the notion of truth one cannot pass on to the 
affirmation of being, because truth implies and pre- 
supposes being, inasmuch as it is an agreement be- 
tween being and intellect. If there were no being, 
there would be no truth. And it is futile to say 
that then, at least this last assertion would still be 
a truth. It would not, for this is a product of 
our fancy which on the one hand imagines that 
neither object nor subject exists, and on the other, 
in the very act of excluding presupposes them. 
The law of the circle could not be called a truth 
if there were no mind to think it because truth 1s 
an agreement between that law and some intelli- 
gence. If the latter does not exist, neither does the 
agreement. “Even if the human intellect did not 
exist,” we read in De Veritate (qu. I, art. 2), “things 
would still be called true in reference to the Divine 
Intellect, given that the existence of such an in- 
tellect were known. But if both intellects were con- 
sidered as not existing,—an impossible supposition, 
—then no ground whatever for truth would remain,” 
—precisely because truth is nothing else than be- 
ing in its relation to the intellect. 

As to the universals, they prescind from time and 


34 BEING 


space because they are abstracted from things and 
their individual motion. But what would become 
of this abstraction if there were no mind to perform 
ii? Eternity and immutability of truth are nega- 
tive notes; and, given an eternal intelligence, there 
will also be an eternal truth. Hence we must needs 
prove the existence of the former if we are to admit 
the latter. From being we arrive at truth, but 
from truth we cannot a@ priori mount to being be- 
cause truth presupposes the being to be proved. 

It is, therefore, unnecessary to admit innate ideas 
in the human mind. Further evidence for this is 
found in the potential character,—established by 
consciousness itself,—of our cognitive faculties, 
lower as well as higher. Our intellect is a passive 
power and contains nothing except what it has in- 
ferred from the senses. “Nzthil est in intellectu quod 
prius non fuertt in sensu.” In the Summa Theolo- 
gica (Ia, qu. 12, art. 12) St. Thomas clearly teaches 
that “our knowledge begins with sense. Hence our 
natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by 
sensible things. And in his opusculum De Princt- 
pio Individuationis he says that “the senses are the 
foundation and origin of human knowledge.” Sen- 
sible reality acts on the understanding by means of 
the “phantasm” or the image from which the “active 
intellect” forms “the impressed intelligible species.” 


the CONQUEST OF BEING 35 


This, by its action on the “possible intellect,” gives 
rise to the “expressed species,” verbum mentis, 
or idea. 

In the cognitive process, therefore, the point 
of departure are the data of sensibility, and the 
concept is reached through the elaboration effected 
by the intellectual power. The sensible datum is 
determinate and individual, but the intellect strips it 
of its individualizing characters and seeks the reason 
of being, the essential constituent of the thing, 
the invariable and absolute essence. In this way 
our mind penetrates to the very heart of reality, 
“ingreditur ad interiora ret,’ says St. Thomas in 
Contra Gentiles (1V, c. II), and it is unnecessary 
tc postulate special divine illumination in order to 
explain the genesis of higher truths. It is enough 
to admit that God is the exemplary cause of all things 
and that our intellect participates in the divine light. 
Things are knowable in the eternal ideas of God, 
not as if there existed a light through which and in 
which we formally know the truth, but in the sense 
that all things are imitations of divine ideas, that 
is, of the absolute Being. 

As a consequence, St. Thomas was prepared to 
combat any attempt to prove absolute Being a priori, 
on the basis of the concept we have of Him. We 
do not reach God except through contingent beings, 


36 BEING 


perceived by the senses and elaborated by intelligence. 
The famous ontological proof of Anselm found a 
decided opponent in Aquinas. 

St. Anselm tried to prove the existence of God 
by starting from the idea we have of Him. In his 
Proslogium he argues as follows against an atheist: 
In our intellect there exists the idea of a being than 
which no greater .can be conceived. Now, that 
which is so great that we can think of nothing 
greater, cannot exist in the intellect alone, because 
then the being that exists both in the mind and in 
reality would evidently be more perfect. Therefore, 
the being than which nothing greater can be con- 
ceived, exists also in reality. 

In his Commentary on the Sentences, in De Veri- 
tate, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and in the 
Summa Theologica St. Thomas rejects this argu- 
ment. He admits that if God is thought of as a 
most perfect being, He must of necessity be thought 
of as existing and cannot be represented as not ex- 
isting. But from this it would only follow that 
God exists in the human intellect and not that He 
exists in reality (in rerum natura), unless it could 
be shown that in reality, too, there exists some being 
than which nothing greater can be conceived. 

In the question, then, of the genesis of our knowl- 
edge St. Thomas does not hesitate to declare the 
Augustinian-Platonic procedure inadmissible. His 


THE CONQUEST OF BEING 37 


point of departure is not the idea, or truth, but the 
fact that being is perceived by the senses. The 
senses, it is true, do not grasp the essence or the 
existence of things because they are blind as to these 
objects and as to the intrinsic, extra-subjective 
reality of the object; but they present an effect of 
reality to the intellect. With this material as a basis, 
we affirm the reality of beings, their essential 
notes, their contingent character, and finally, the 
existence of a Being that is the ultimate reason of 
all others and contains within itself the reason of 
its own existence. 

The gradual conquest of being in the domain of 
knowledge is what we find in the Thomistic doc- 
trine of the genesis of ideas. We are beings, the 
material objects around us are beings. Through 
sensation we make contact with these beings. With 
the intellect we affirm them, understand the reason 
of being, ascend from contingent to necessary being, 
from material to immaterial beings, from the lowest 
gerade of being to the highest. ‘Thus Metaphysics 
attains to a concept of the ego, of the world, and 
of God, by starting from experience, without, of 
course, aprioristically excluding psychical facts. 

This is the reason, as Professor Zamboni notes, 
why the Aristotelian-Thomistic school divides meta- 
physics into two parts: (1) general metaphysics or 
ontology, which treats of being and its causes; and 


38 BEING 


(2) special metaphysics, which deals with the soul 
and God, and is the application of ontology to 
immaterial beings. “Metaphysics has for its proper 
object, not the spiritual world, but the world of 
experience. Having formed its concepts from this 
world, and gained its principles, it rises to the con- 
cepts of a spiritual soul and of God: hence it does 
not start from the existence of the soul and of God, 
and thence descend to facts, but it begins with facts 
and thence mounts to the soul and to God. In the 
field of cognition we proceed from the lowest beings 
to the supreme Being, God. 


3. St. Thomas and the Validity of Our Knowledge 


This method has led many to reproach St. Thomas 
with absolute ignorance of the problem of knowl- 
edge, which is so much in evidence in contemporary 
discussion. Thomism, it is urged, is a childish 
dogmatism, which does not even touch the prelimi- 
nary question of all philosophy, namely, can we know 
being? That is the question, especially to-day, since 
Kant has spoken. A system that fails to answer it 
except in an a priori fashion, 1s unworthy of con- 
sideration. 

I grant that St. Thomas does not attack the 
problem of knowledge as it is understood to-day. 
But it seems to me that those who enter this com- 
plaint are wrong in not asking themselves, whether 


EV AIDE PYs OFS KNOWERDGE 29 


the question could have had a meaning for the 
medieval thinker. To understand St. Thomas one 
must regard his teaching in the light of that idea of 
being which is its essential note. ‘This is an in- 
dispensable requisite for the great Doctor’s op- 
ponents as well as for those of his followers who 
would correct or round out his teaching. 

1. According to the ideology of St. Thomas, as 
Professor Giuseppe Zamboni observes in his work 
on Problemi Antichi e Idee Nuove, “the senses give 
us the phenomena. The sense of sight presents a 
certain definite color, a certain extension; the sense 
of taste, a definite savour, which we feel or have 
felt. These sensations and images group and associ- 
ate themselves in a fixed manner. Of an orange, 
for example, the sense of sight gives me such and 
such a color, the muscular sense such and such a 
weight, the sense of smell this particular odor, and 
so on. In other words they confront me with a 
group of phenomena. When I perceive the datum, 
1. €., some particular phenomenon, with my senses, 
my intellect proceeds to consider this datum from its 
own point of view and says: here is something that 
exists, here is a being. The function of the senses 
is to put me in the presence of something green, 
heavy, fragrant; the function of the intellect is to 
place me in the presence of a being. . . . ‘Intellectus 
naturaliter cognoscit ens —it is the nature of the in- 


40 BEING 


tellect to know being. If, for example, I see a black 
point moving in the air, if I feel resistance while 
walking in the dark, my first thought is: Here is 
something; subsequently I say: This something has 
this or that color, such and such a shape, these dimen- 
sions, presents such and such physical, chemical, 
biological, psychical aspects, so that I am led to say 
that this hitherto vague something is an airplane, 
or an eagle, or a fly or whatever else it may be. Let 
us assume that it is an eagle. I study its character- 
istics carefully, but at the bottom of all the ex- 
perimental, scientific, mathematical researches I can 
make about this eagle, will always remain the notion: 
This eagle is a being, it exists, independently of 
the thought by which I conceive it. The table, the 
pen, the animal, the ego, exist even when no one 
thinks them.” The existence of the thing, that is, 
its reality independent of thought, or that energy by 
which it maintains itself in the order of the actual, 
cannot be properly defined. The concept of being 
is at the bottom of every concept; it is the first idea 
conceived by the mind when it comes in contact with 
experience (external and internal); it is perfectly 
clear in itself, and distinct from the concept of mere 
presence, time, or space. Everyone says: I exist, 
and understands and feels without further ex- 
planation what this word means. Jllud quod primo 


THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 41 


intellectus concipit quasi notissimum est ens,—what 
the intellect conceives first of all as the best known 
of all, is being. 

2. This idea of being, conceived by an original 
act proper to a faculty called intellect, is abstracted 
from reality, and from every grade of reality, be- 
cause in effect every form of reality is being. 
Color is a form of being (c’est de l’étre, the French 
would say); life, motion, action, sound, taste, all 
are forms of being. There is not a thing in the 
world to which the note of being does not apply. 

The origin of this idea, then, is to be sought 
in the data furnished by sensation. But from the 
fact that the process by which we form ideas starts 
with sensation, it by no means follows that the 
final product is of the same nature as sensation, or 
that it is reducible to, and has the individuating 
qualities distinctive of, sensations. The sensory 
datum is elaborated by the intellect, which discerns, 
intues being, the ratio entis, that is, an original 
datum, refractory to a sensist interpretation, and 
to be classified apart from the data of sense, because 
of its special and essentially different nature. 

It is not the senses that perceive being. They 
merely perceive shape, weight, taste, smell, which are 
then conceived by the intellect as being, as an entity. 
This entity, however, is not a residue of a sensible 


42 BEING 


nature; it is not the proper object of any of the 
senses; it is not formed by any image or perception, 
but is implicit in all. The act of conceiving the 
sense data as bemmg, as something existing, is an act 
of the intellect. This idea of being is of a nature 
different from, and superior to, the sense-images 
and the results of their associations; the organs of 
the senses, the nerves, the cerebral and spinal centers, 
merely fulfil a preparatory function in the formation 
of thought. If the origin of the idea is in sensa- 
tion (mhil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in 
sensu), the nature of the idea is quite different from 
sensation itself. There is an essential distinction 
between sense and intellect. 

3. After the intellect has grasped, in the phe- 
nomena of sense, this first notion of being, which is 
its proper object, after it has formed this first con- 
cept, contained in all the things which the senses can 
offer, because all are apprehended as something that 
exists, we proceed to elaborate this fundamental idea, 
which at first was confused and indeterminate. 
And with the idea of being we form all the other 
metaphysical ideas, whose validity, therefore, is 
bound up with that of the idea of being. He who 
admits that we can truly say: “something exists,” 
he who recognizes the objective validity of the 
initial notion of being, cannot raise the question as 
to the validity of the other ideas, for all are resolved 


THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 43 


into that one. TIllud ...tn quo [wttellectus] 
omnes conceptiones resolvit, est ens.” 
And so: 


Essence is what a being is. 

Existence is the act by which a being is. 

Potency is that which can be, or the capacity for 
being. 

Act is that which exists. 

Substance is that which has existence in itself. 

Accident is that which has no autonomous exist- 
ence, 

God is the Being that exists, and cannot not exist. 

Cause is that by which being begins to be. 

Effect is that which exists by virtue of another 
being. 

End is the reason for the existence of a being. 

The true is being in so far as it is known. 

The good is being in so far as it is desired. 

Becoming is the passage from non-being to being, 

Matter and Form are the elements of substantial 
being, which is created and corporeal. 

In short, all the ideas of Thomistic metaphysics 
are a development of the idea of being, and, like this 
idea, bear the marks of universality and of inde- 
pendence from time and space, which essentially 
differentiate them from sense-images and_ sensa- 
tions. They are not inborn but acquired, as 
grounded in the idea of being. They are not seen 


A4. BEING 


in God, in the eternal ideas or reasons, but in created 
reality, where, little by little, with the patient effort 
of induction and analysis, we seek to find out what 
things are, what their essence and nature. In this 
manner, starting from the material offered by the 
senses, we ascend the mount of metaphysics and find 
that this entire domain of ideas is dominated by the 
one sovereign idea of being. 

4. For St. Thomas, the supreme principles of 
thought and reality stand in intimate relation to the 
metaphysical concepts of being. 

Well-known is the following passage of the 
Summa Theologica (Ja, Ile, qu. 94, art. 2): 
“What our intellect comes to know first of all is 
being, the idea of which is included in everything 
that man knows. Hence the first undemonstrable 
principle is that a thing cannot be afhrmed and de- 
nied at one and the same time. This principle is 
founded on the concept of being and non-being, and 
is presupposed by all other principles.” 

The order in the cognitive process is, therefore, 
the following: the intelligence, first of all, has the 
intuition of being; on this intuition it directly founds 
the principle of contradiction, the best known and 
most obvious of all, and to which all the other ele- 
mentary and primary principles are reduced. 

Over and over again in his works St. Thomas re- 
minds us that “the knowledge of first principles is 


THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 45 


grounded in the cognition of being (fundatur pri- 
morum principiorum notitia).’ If the notion of 
being is valid, so are first principles. If the former 
reflects reality, then the latter are laws, not only of 
thought, but also of reality, of being, because in the 
last analysis they can be reduced to being and to 
nothing else. 

As a matter of fact, a careful consideration will 
show that all principles imply the parent idea of 
being: 

The principle of contradiction is stated thus: 
The same being cannot be and not be at the same 
time. 

The principle of identity says: A being is what 
it@is. 

The principle of the excluded third teaches that 
between being and non-being there is no middle way, 
that is to say, a thing either is, or it is not. 

The principle of causality reminds us that every 
being that begins to exist, every being that does not 
contain within itself the reason for its existence, 
derives it from another being. 

All the other principles spring in like manner 
from the concept of being. 

Here, again, he who admits that our intellect can 
safely assert that it reaches the absolute when it 
says, “Something exists; he who grants the objec- 
tive validity of the notion of being cannot consis- 


46 BEING 


tently stop halfway, but is inevitably drawn within 
the domain of Thomistic metaphysics. If being is 
not a creation of our mind nor an act of our thought, 
if our spirit,—or better, the act of our thinking,— 
does not create being, but merely recognizes and 
ascertains it; if, in other words, one does not deny 
the objective validity of this concept, then the prob- 
lem of knowledge cannot even be raised. After a 
searching inquiry into the validity of the judgments 
by which I state first principles, 1 find that it is not 
a blind and ineluctable force which constrains me to 
attribute the predicate to the subject, but that it is 
the light of objective evidence which makes me look 
attentively at the relations of the two terms to each 
other. The connection between subject and predi- 
cate is made under the influence of evidence, in the 
light of the intellectual manifestation of their truth; 
and the connection is made anew every time and 
is grasped in its very making. From this seen con- 
nection, concludes Professor Zamboni, first principles 
draw that character of intrinsic necessity which dis- 
tinguishes them. They are principles whose truth 
does not depend on the external world of reality. 
They abstract from time. They do not appear to 
us aS categories innate in ourselves. On the con- 
trary, we recognize them as the laws of reality; and 
they are likewise the laws of our thought in so far 
as they are the laws of reality. They are judgments 


THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 47 


that “declare not only an wnthinkableness, but an 
impossibility; it is being itself that manifests itself 
as subject to the law of non-contradiction,’ and to 
the other laws that flow from this one,—laws which 
are, therefore, “the laws of being considered as 
such, and which ‘have a universal application 
antecedently to experience. Thus is rendered possi- 
ble the legitimate passage from my sense modi- 
fication to the existence of the cause that produced 
it.” In short, once the validity of the category of 
being is recognized, we have a secure foundation on 
which to raise the entire edifice of metaphysics. 
There is but one way to shake and demolish it: 
by striking at the life-giving idea of being.’ If this 
latter were subjective, as the Kantians claim, or if 
being were an act of creative thought, as the Hege- 
lians would have it, then Thomistic metaphysics 
would be dealt its death blow. But for St. Thomas 
the thing most certain was this initial affirmation of 
being. For him the assertion, “I conceive some 
1Small wonder, then, that the polemics between Thomists 
and Rosminians were so heated some years ago. Antonio 
Rosmini was too profound a thinker not to bring out clearly 
the essential importance of the idea of being. With this idea 
he built up his system, and on it he based his position against 
Kant. But by asserting that the idea of being was inborn in 
us, he gave rise to some errors, to much confusion, and to a 
thousand discussions concerning the subjective or objective 


validity of the idea itself. It is worthy of notice how a 
slight mistake on this point means the ruin of the whole. 


48 BEING 


9 


thing, some thing exists,” was not made lightly or 
dogmatically. To be sure, he could bring forward 
no proof for it; not, however, because arguments 
were deficient or the thesis obscure, but because of 
its intrinsic and dazzling clearness. To him it 
seemed absurd that one could doubt being, so force- 
fully attested, among others, by our consciousness. 

“No one,” he writes in De Verttate (qu. x, art. 
12, ad 7), “can assent to the thought that he does 
not exist; for in the very act of thinking he per- 
ceives that he exists.” And inasmuch as the entire 
validity of our knowledge depends on this one single 
root, being, he could neither raise nor conceive a 
problem of knowledge such as the old and the new 
Sceptics propound. These pretend to demonstrate 
the veracity of our cognitive faculty by means of 
a process which must needs presuppose it, because 
they make use of the very faculty about which they 
doubt. 

The Augustinian tendency, as we saw, under- 
scored the second member of the relation: being and 
the knowledge of being (or truth), took it as the 
starting-point, and tried to reach being in the name 
of truth. Empiricism tended to limit itself to the 
first member, being, in the name of experience and 
fact, without rising to the reasons of being, that 
is, to its intelligibility or rationality. Placed be- 
tween these two important currents, St. Thomas 


THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS § 49 


took account of both. And he differed from 
every one of his precursors, even from Albert the 
Great, in that he knew how to compass his philo- 
-sophic synthesis with the notion of being,—a notion 
found explicitly in the Stagirite, but reaching its 
complete elaboration only in his medieval com- 
mentator. 


4, The Problem of Universals 


The attitude of St. Thomas on the question of 
knowledge is closely bound up with his position on 
another problem which deeply stirred medieval think- 
ers, especially from the eleventh to the fifteenth 
century. I mean the question of universals. 

Though Scholasticism can not be artificially con- 
fined within the bounds of the conflict waged about 
the problem of universals, none the less, as De Wulf 
remarks in his Histoire de la Philosophie Médiévale, 
and Le Probléme des Universaux dans son Evolution 
Historique de 1X ° au XIII ° Siécle, this problem was 
one of the first to be put forth in the field of pure 
speculation and absorbed the greatest effort of 
thought during this period. When we read the 
descriptions of these conflicts, and by means of the 
accurate studies and researches of to-day assist at 
the disputations of that time and witness the clash 
between a Roscellin and a St. Anselm, between an 
Abélard and a St. Bernard, we seem to be viewing 


50 BEING 


a battle in which all the resources of the keenest 
genius and all the weapons of the finest dialectic 
were engaged. 

And that battle, far from having a purely historic 
interest, is of vital importance even in our own day. 
From time to time, even though under different 
forms, the same problem crops up again and calls 
for a solution. In‘the epoch of Positivism it is the 
theory of John Stuart Mill and Taine, entwining it- 
self with ancient Nominalism. Again, it is the 
discussion concerning the value of the laws of 
science. Once more, it is the distinction of Bene- 
detto Croce between pure concept and empirical and 
abstract pseudo-concepts. They are new phases, 
as Windelband says, “behind which rises the more 
general and more difficult question whether any meta- 
physical value belongs to these universal determi- 
nations which are the aim of every scientific anal- 
ysis. There are scientists to-day,’ continues the 
German historian of philosophy, “who dismiss the 
question of universals as having been consigned 
to the scrap-heap long ago, or look upon it as a 
malady of outgrown infancy. Until these scientists 
can tell us with full security and clearness wherein 
metaphysical reality and the efficacy of what they 
call natural laws consist, we must. always tell them: 
mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.” 

The problem,—to indicate it briefly—was born 


THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS 51 


of the seeming contradiction between the universal 
character of our concepts and the individual charac- 
ter of things in themselves. 

We perceive in ourselves the existence of uni- 
versal ideas. We possess a numerous category of 
intellectual representations that have for their ob- 
ject being in general and the universal determi- 
nations of being, independently of matter and of 
every individualizing note;—in short, we have a 
knowledge of things that is abstract and universal. 
The things accessible to our senses, on the contrary, 
are particular, individual, concrete. Being as an 
object existing outside of us, seems to have prop- 
erties totally opposed to being as an object conceived 
by our mind. 

Porphyry in his Jsagoge raised the question about 
genera and species, but offered no solution. Boe- 
thius upheld two contradictory theses. The first 
Doctors of the Middle Ages took the dispute up 
again, and gradually there arose various schools 
which are usually classified as follows: 

1. Nominalism solves the seeming discord between 
the real world and the world of thought by deny- 
ing the existence and possibility of universal con- 
cepts. There are no universal realities in nature, 
nor are there universal representations in our in- 
tellect. What we believe to be abstract and unt- 
versal concepts are nothing else than a word, a 


‘52 BEING 


name, a device, a label for the collective desig- 
nation of diverse individuals. Our representations 
are as individual as the reality that we observe. 

2. Conceptualism recognizes the presence and 
ideal value of universal representations in our mind, 
but denies them real value. In the world of the 
particular there is no common element realized in 
each one of them ;—there is no universality. The 
universal forms of our mind have no corresponding 
real term in external nature, but are mere concepts, 
produced by the mind for reasons of subjective 
exigency. 

3. Exaggerated Realism admits the existence of 
the universal not only in our thought, but in the 
reality of things. The harmony, therefore, between 
the universal concept and objective reality is evident, 
because the concept mirrors the real in the exact 
degree of universality with which it is invested. 

4. Moderate Realism faces the difficulty: “How 
can a universal representation be in agreement with 
a world that contains nothing but individuals,’ and 
solves it thus: It is quite true that things are in- 
dividual. But in the individuals we discover com- 
mon notes, marks of equality, types, identical es- 
sences, which, while they have no universality in the 
single beings, when the intellect considers and views 
them in relation to the particular subjects in which 
they are or can be realized, are found to be attribut- 


THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS 53 


able to each and all. In other words, in the in- 
dividuals there is that in which they agree and that 
by which they differ; without error the mind can 
perceive the agreement and prescind from the differ- 
ence. The universal concept as such (formaliter) 
is in the intellect only; but it has its potential foun- 
dation (est fundamentaliter et potentialiter) in 
things, in the external world. 


This problem of the universals may be considered 
from a threefold viewpoint: 

1. Psychologically I can consider the general con- 
cepts present in my mind, not in their finished state, 
but in the process of formation. That is, I can seek 
out and follow up their genesis in the human soul 
in the light of the special formative laws of the 
mind. 

2. Logically the universal is a notion, a concept 
existing in the human intellect, and by its nature 
destined to be predicated of a number of things. 

3. Metaphysically the universal is the common es- 
sence, the identical substratum of a determinate 
species, realized or capable of being realized in vari- 
ous individuals. 

As a result, the question of universals is essen- 
tially connected with metaphysics, and its interest is 
not restricted to logic and psychology. It was not 
without reason that St. Thomas fully discussed this 


54 BEING 


question in his purely metaphysical treatise De 
Ente et Essentia. Besides, a glance at the history 
of philosophy is enough to make one realize that 
every solution of the problem of universals has 
behind it a corresponding metaphysic of its own. 
To Nominalism, for instance, corresponds the meta- 
physic of individualism, to quote the happy def- 
inition of Windelband. To exaggerated Realism 
corresponds the metaphysic of ideas or of truth. To 
moderate Realism, or realistic Conceptualism, as 
Canella would prefer to call it, corresponds the 
metaphysic of being. And it is in relation to the 
metaphysical conception of being that we must 
now examine the position taken by St. Thomas on 
the problem of universals. 

We have stated that in the Thomistic theory the 
intellect is the faculty that grasps being. Our intel- 
lect seeks to fathom the reason of being. Intellect, 
knowledge of being, knowledge of the reason of 
being—all these imply one another. 

Now, in studying beings I ascertain that there are 
some reasons or natures common to different groups. 
In the manifold squares that really exist, or could 
exist, I note an identical nature (that of a square 
and not a circle), or an identical reason of being. 
All free acts that are or could be accomplished have 
this in common that, no matter how completely they 
may differ from one another otherwise, they agree 


THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS | 55 


in the nature of a free act, that is, in one reason 
of being which is verified in each one and makes 
them to be free and not compulsory acts. In all 
the men of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, I 
do not find two individuals, not even two hands 
exactly alike; and yet all agree in one sole reason 
of being, in one single human nature,—otherwise 
they would no longer be men, but, for example, dogs, 
Gats,ncdDesy, CLC. 

At this point another question presented itself. 
It is much more subtle and has to be well dis- 
tinguished from the first, though some writers, 
—among them De Maria,—have confused them. 
The question concerns the principium individua- 
tions, the principle of individuation. If the reason 
of being is the same in several individuals, how can 
they possibly differ from one another? How can 
one conceive a numerical difference where there is 
specific identity ? 

St. Thomas answered that the principle of in- 
dividuation is not the common nature, not the es- 
sential form, because this form explains the specific 
identity. Much less can this principle be found in 
the accidents, which accrue only after the in- 
dividual has been constituted. Therefore it must 
be the materia signata quantitate—matter as marked 
or determined by quantity. If I take a piece of gold 
and divide it into two parts, the reason of being of 


56 BEING 


each is the same, because both the one and the other 
is gold, and this cannot explain the numerical distinc- 
tion. Instead, this distinction finds its explanation 
in matter, in the determinate quantity of matter 
contained in the two pieces. 

If the human intellect were not only a faculty of 
being, but in its first intuition would lay hold of the 
whole reality of the single things; if in this fashion 
it could know being in its entirety, down to its in- 
nermost depths and recesses, then, even while bring- 
ing out the reason of being common to several in- 
dividuals, it would see it individualized in this mat- 
ter, with these individuating notes, and the indi- 
vidual would be grasped in its complete singularity. 

But here is the drawback: our intellect, while 
truly a faculty for knowing being, is imperfect in 
that it is an abstractive faculty. It does not mirror 
the whole being; it does not know matter, the source 
of individuation. But it abstracts from being the 
reason of being common to a definite group of things. 
And there is question not only of an isolating abstrac- 
tion,—which, in considering a determinate object, 
prescinds from one part of its reality to fix on the 
examination of another part,—but of a universal- 
izing abstraction. As we shall see later, when study- 
ing the limits of Thomistic intellectualism, the 
human intellect can not reach the individual di- 
rectly ; it does not know beings except by abstracting 


TAC PROBUEM) Obs UNIVERSAL Sa 57, 


from matter and from individualizing and differ- 
entiating characteristics (Summa Theologica, la, qu. 
yomattws ys di.57) art. 2).ad. 1 etc, ap wontronted 
by the sensory datum of a group of men, circles, 
and so on, the intellect abstracts from the matter 
of which they consist, from their color, their di- 
mensions, and directly seizes only their reason of 
being, their nature, their quidditas or essence. 

This reason of being, this quidditas,—by which 
beings are what they are and not different, and 
which does not give us the whole of an individual, 
but only an essential aspect of it,—in so far as it 
is considered as existing in the single beings, was 
called by St. Thomas the metaphysical universal, 
the direct universal, intentio prima. He called it 
universal because, by abstracting from the indi- 
vidualizing conditions, it could be applied to many. 
He said that it existed in re, in reality, non quoad 
modum concipiendi, sed quoad rem conceptam; 
that is, not after the manner of our representation 
(because the nature of man, for example, does not 
exist as a universal, without matter and individual- 
izing notes), but as to the thing represented (be- 
cause in every individual man there is the nature 
of man). 

If, instead, this nature is viewed, not as it is 
individualized in the single beings, but in itself; if 
the mind returns to the object taken in the state of 


58 BEING 


abstraction and considers it, as St. Thomas said, 
reduplicative ut universale,—precisely in so far as 
it is universal, that is, in so far as it can be or is 
communicated to many,—then we have the logical 
universal, the reflex universal, the universal se- 
cundae intentionis, which, of course, exists only in 
the mind. It is an elaboration of the concept of 
the reason of being;—it is the concept of a concept. 

St. Thomas had to reach his tempered realism 
by virtue of his theory concerning being and the 
knowledge of being. If in the groups of indi- 
vidual beings,—the only ones that exist,—the intel- 
lect discovers and abstracts a common and universal 
nature or reason of being, then we understand how 
a universal representation can be in agreement with 
a world that contains nothing but individuals. In 
these there exists a common reason of being, which 
I can represent to myself by abstracting, prescind- 
ing from matter and individual characteristics. 
Its applicability to many individuals is its univer- 
sality. But in the particular beings it is realized 
not in the abstract, but together with the individual 
notes. In this manner the vexing problem of the 
universals was solved. 


If, on the one hand, this solution followed natu- 
rally from the Thomistic conception of the reality 
of the intellect as a faculty abstractive of being, on 


THE PROBLEM OB UNEVERSALS* (69 


the other, it was a synthesis of all the other theories. 

Moderate Realism, upheld by St. Thomas to- 
gether with Aristotle, Abélard, Alexander of Hales, 
and Albert the Great, grants to Nominalism and 
Conceptualism that the universal, logically consid- 
ered, exists only in the mind; and it agrees with 
the metaphysics of individualism in maintaining that — 
in the reality of things individuals alone exist. 

As to exaggerated Realism, the Thomistic theory 
admits that the universal is not a name or a mere 
concept of the mind, but has a reality in things them- 
selves, not, indeed, as to the manner of representa- 
tion, but as to the thing represented. Moreover, 
satisfying the demands of the metaphysics of ideas 
and truth, it distinguishes 

(a) the universale ante rem, that is to say, the 
essential ideas of things as they exist from all 
eternity in the divine Mind,—ideas affirmed by St. 
Augustine in his improvement on the Platonic ideas, 
the eternal and HE AI prototypes of phe- 
nomenal realities ; 

(b) the universale in re, or the metaphysical uni- 
versal, immanent in things, which is the general and 
eternal type (ante rem) as realized in existing or 
possible individuals ; 

(c) the universale post rem, or the logical univer- 
sal, existing only in the human mind, as the abstract 
concept universalized. 


60 BEING 


As in other problems, so here, too, St. Thomas— 
preceded in this especially by his teacher, Albert the 
Great—united the various currents of his time into 
a single stream, vivified by the idea of being. 


5. The Metaphysics of St. Thomas 


If in the field of knowledge being is the ladder by 
which we mount from the lowest rungs to the sum- 
mit, in the ontological domain perfect Being is the 
sole source of all other beings, so that reality does 
not appear as sundered by unexplainable scissions, 
but manifests itself as connected and animated by 
being. 

The supreme reality is God, Being tout court, 
simply; it is that which exists and cannot not exist, 
that whose essence is its existence, and therefore 
full, perfect, total existence, that is to say, absolute 
actuality and perfection. In this Being, in whom 
there is no real distinction between essence and exist- 
ence, any imperfection, change, potentiality is simply 
inconceivable. 

Only this Being by essence can explain, that 
is, furnish us with the true reason of the uwni- 
verse and of all things which come within our 
experience, which change, which become, and by 
that token are not absolute, necessary, perfect Being, 
but contingent and imperfect beings. Precisely be- 
cause they are such, they are not pure actuality, 


MEPALILY SICS On SLE THOMAS @ w61 


but composed of potency and act, that is, they are 
limited in their perfection and do not possess the 
fulness of being. For this reason we must dis- 
tinguish in them essence from e-istence. Their 
essential notes do not contain the sufficient reason 
of their existence. Existence is in them, but not 
from them, otherwise they would be the absolute 
and not the contingent, the perfect and not the im- 
perfect. 

Two questions can be put in regard to every being: 
“Does it really exist?” and, “What is it?’ These 
two questions about the existence and essence of 
things receive a different solution according as they 
concern the necessary Being or the other beings. 
In the case of the former it would be a contradic- 
tion not to think of Him as existing. The essence 
of the latter does not imply their existence; the 
properties of a triangle, the nature of man or of a 
tree, for instance, do not imply that men or triangles 
must of necessity exist. The idea representing a 
triangle remains absolutely the same, whether this 
triangle exists in reality or not. But the idea of 
the necessary Being implies the note of existence 
in its very essence. That the necessary Being exists 
or does not exist will, of course, have to be demon- 
strated,—but not a priort. However, if He does 
exist, there is in Him no distinction between essence 
and existence, no composition of potency and act: 


62 BEING 


by definition He is complete and self-subsisting 
Being. 

Between the beings whose existence is not of their 
essence, but to whom existence “happens,” is con- 
tingent (accidit esse), we can make another division. 

There are beings whose property it is to exist in 
themselves and not in another. Here we have sub- 
stance, the subject that does not depend on another 
(created) subject, the subject on which the actions, 
movements, activities, changes lean and depend. 
Our soul, for example, is a substance: without this 
stable and lasting principle all the manifold phe- 
nomena of our life would be without foundation, 
root, and unity. 

There are beings, on the contrary, to whose nature 
it belongs to exist in another. These are the acci- 
dents, distributed in nine categories. They are 
rather beings of being than beings in the full sense, 
because they presuppose substance, which alone is 
competent of being in the proper and more true 
meaning. “Ens,’ we read in De Ente et Essentia, 
“absolute et per prius dicitur de substantits, per po- 
sterius autem et quidem secundum quid de accidentt- 
bus.” 

Of the substances, some are immaterial, others 
material. 

Prescinding from God, the spiritual substances 
are immaterial, Because of the dominion they 


MEW ADITYSICS OF ST. <tHOMAS 63 


exercise over their acts, and because of their freedom 
to act or not to act, they are given a special name,— 
that of person. 

The other substances in their turn are composed 
of matter and form, that is, of a potential and an 
actual element. 

Briefly, being appears to the mind of St. Thomas 
in this manner: perfect and necessary Being, con- 
tingent and limited beings whose essence is distinct 
from their existence; beings in themselves,—the 
substances, beings in another,—the accidents; im- 
material beings and beings composed of matter 
and form. And in this comprehensive conception 
(which sums up and rounds out the whole of Aristo- 
telianism, with the theories of potency and act, with 
the study of the causes of being,—material, formal, 
efficient, final_—and the doctrine of the categories) 
everything is reduced to being, in the unity of a 
plan, inasmuch as all beings by participation depend 
on the Being by essence. 

To being as such, moreover, belong certain proper- 
ties, which are always and of necessity present in 
everything that exists. Without taking away any- 
thing of its transcendental and primal character 
from the general notion of being, these properties 
nevertheless render it more applicable and richer. 
These properties of being, known as transcendentals, 
are three: the unum, the verum, the bonum. ‘That 


64. BEING 


is to say: if a thing is one, it exists; if a thing is 
true, it exists; if a thing is good, it exists; and 
vice versa: if there is a being, it is one, it is true, 
it is good. 

In a well-known passage of the treatise De 
Veritate (qu. I, art. 1) there are enumerated five 
transcendental notions of being, for to the three men- 
tioned St. Thomas adds res and aliquid. If a thing 
exists, it has its nature, it 1s a ves, it is one thing and 
not a different thing. In like manner, if a thing 
exists, it is not only undivided in itself, it is unum, 
but it is also divided from every other being, it is 
an aliud quid, a something else, an aliquid, in the 
expression peculiar to medieval philosophic Latin. 
But it is quite evident that the res (thing), the 
aliquid, and the unum constitute and concurrently 
integrate the first great transcendental notion flow- 
ing from the idea of being and applicable to every 
being, that is to say, the idea of unity. 

For St. Thomas, then, “ens, unum, verum et 
bonum convertuntur,’ 1. e., the notion of being coin- 
cides with that of oneness, of truth, of perfection. 
And because at first sight this thesis might seem 
somewhat abstruse, it will not be superfluous to say a 
word in illustration of the paramount importance 
of this Thomistic position. 

This position,—let us say it at once,—is the re- 
sult of a synthetic vision of all preceding thought. 


ME PARELY SIGSTOP STs. THOMAS A" 65 


As a matter of fact, Aristotle with his theory of 
matter and form, had demonstrated the unity of 
substance in his Metaphysics. Substance is an 
individual whole, containing two essential principles, 
matter and form, as directly united to each other 
as the edge to the axe and sight to the eye. If 
every form were done away with, there would be 
no matter, and without matter, there would be no 
form here below. Every substance, then, is one 
in its duality. Oneness cannot be conceived as 
external to being. For Aristotle, says Ravaisson, 
unity and being are as identical as the concavity 
and convexity of a curve. The act of being is of 
itself unitary: if being is not one, then there are 
two or more beings; but in one being, despite the 
multiplicity of phenomena, there is a oneness that 
coincides with being. 

In his study of reality Plato had stressed another 
idea,—the idea of the good. The Good in the Pla- 
tonic system is the soul,—if one may use this ex- 
pression,—of being. It is the supreme idea, the 
primordial fountain, from which all beings draw, 
and of which they partake. The true reality, the 
ideas, precisely because they have being, are rays 
of this supreme luminous source, in which, in the 
opinion of many, consists the God of Plato. Be- 
ing, therefore, coincides with goodness. 

However, the founder of the Academy fell into a 


66 BEING 


serious error: his characteristic dualism, which led 
him to recognize the ideas and their world as the 
only true being, the only true reality. For this 
reason the Neo-Platonic school, and later in a very 
special manner St. Augustine, completed the teach- 
ing of the Master. Under the influence of Christian 
thought the sun of goodness beamed on all reality, 
on every being, and a third point, that of Truth, 
was brought into clearer light. The supreme Being 
is supreme Truth and supreme Goodness; every- 
thing that depends on this One is a ray of truth and 
is a good. For St. Augustine no being exists that 
is not one, and true, and good. Evil under what- 
ever form,—intellectual or moral,—is only relative; 
it is the privation of a natural good, but it is not an 
absolute entity. The perfect Principle can create 
nothing but what is unity, truth, goodness. 

By this time the following philosophical conclu- 
sions had been gained by the Augustinian specu- 
lation: 

I. Reality, being, is unity in multiplicity; there- 
fore the concept of individuality is valid. 

2. Reality is intelligible, or, as the moderns would 
say, it is rational, because it is either Reason itself 
or a creation of Reason. To speak of reality and 
to speak of truth, intelligibility, and rationality, is 
one and the same thing. 

3. Reality is perfection, either absolute or par- 


DIET EIY oiGo Oko lo TOMAS 267 


ticipated; therefore, to speak of reality, of finality, 
of goodness, is again one and the same thing. 

A metaphysic or a philosophical system is pos- 
sible only in so far as the start is made from 
this basis. 

(a) The philosophical system must be unity in 
multiplicity ; the various theses form but one thesis; 
the various parts are united with one another like 
the members of an organism. And this is impossible 
unless being itself is unity in multiplicity. The 
system must mirror reality as it is; only on con- 
dition that in reality itself being is unity, can we 
understand that also in the systematic conception 
to know is to unify. 

(b) The philosophical system would become in- 
conceivable if the real were not rational, if being 
and truth did not coincide. Let us suppose, as a 
hypothesis, that reality were irrational. This would 
mean that the meaningless would exist. Our reason, 
too, would be meaningless, and its operations, its rea- 
sonings, would be a mass of absurdities. How, then 
could a philosophy be constructed? 

(c) A philosophical system necessarily means a 
teleological vision of the universe, which must over- 
come dark pessimism and empty optimism. Abso- 
lute evil would be an irrationality, and we should 
fall into the preceding predicament. 

The same holds true of the moral domain: the 


68 BEING 


very possibility of ethics and the realization of a 
moral life entail those three properties of being. 

St. Thomas did not hesitate to gather up this 
material worked out by his predecessors. In his 
metaphysics, too, being may be considered in itself, 
or in its relation to the intellect, or in its reference 
to the will. 

Considered in itself, every being is one, as the 
Summa Theologica teaches (Ia, qu. 11, art. 1), and 
“one does not add anything to being; it is only a 
negation of division: for one means undivided be- 
ing. This is the very reason why one is the same 
as being. Every being is either simple or compound. 
What is simple, is undivided, both actually and po- 
tentially. What is compound, has not got being 
whilst its parts are divided, but only after they 
make up and compose it. Hence it is manifest 
that the being of anything consists in undivision; 
and hence it is that everything keeps unity as it 
keeps being.” And here St. Thomas seeks to ex- 
plain how the unity of a being harmonizes with its 
composition, whether metaphysical or physical. If, 
for example, I observe myself, I see that I am en- 
dowed with rationality, sensibility, life, corporeity, 
substance. I see likewise that I am composed of 
matter and form, and so on; and yet I am one single 
being. With analyses of surpassing nicety St. 
Thomas examines how the various formalities or 


METAPHY SIGS, OR ST. v THOMAS, 69 


the multiplicity of component parts do not destroy 
the actual unity of the subject. 

If we consider reality in reference to the intel- 
lect, every being is true. Indeed, of every being, 
by the very fact that it is, it is true that it is what 
it is. Quidquid est, intelligi potest,—everything 
that exists has its reason of being. The notion of 
entity implies that of ontological truth. 

Finally, if reality is viewed in relation to the 
will, every being is good. For St. Thomas the good 
has the nature of the desirable, of that which stirs 
appetency: “bonum est quod omnia appetunt,’— 
goodness is what all desire. Hence he proceeds in 
this manner: “It is clear that a thing is desirable 
only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their 
own perfection. Everything is perfect in so far as 
it is actual. Therefore, it is clear that a thing is 
perfect in so far as it exists; for it is existence that 
makes all things actual. Hence it follows that good- 
ness and being are really the same,’ (Summa Theol., 
Jap qu.-5, art..6). 

Here, too, the Thomistic synthesis is character- 
ized by being. It is being that is necessarily one; 
it is being that is of necessity intelligible; it is being 
that must needs be act, perfection, goodness. From 
the notion of being flow the other notions of indi- 
viduality, intelligibility or rationality, and finality. 
And even in the order of the transcendentals St. 


70 BEING 


Thomas upholds this priority of being. First of all, 
there is being, as he teaches in De Veritate (qu. 21, 
art, 3,\c,) ;aiter being, the one; then the true; otter 
the true comes the good. This is so because a 
thing is one in so far as it exists; it can be understood 
in so far as it exists and is one; it is good in so far 
as it is present to the mind not only in its speciflc 
essence, but also according to the being it has in 
itself. 

All this is quite clear in the entirety of the Thom- 
istic system. Given that being exists and that the 
being which is contingent, limited, caused, in the 
process of becoming, depends throughout on the 
Being that is necessary, perfect, unchangeable, un- 
caused, the last end of all reality,—it is evident why 
St. Thomas reasoned on general lines (as he does in 
De Ente et Essentia concerning goodness) as fol- 
lows: from the one, the true, the good can come only 
what is one, true, good. But every being proceeds 
from the divine unity, truth, and goodness. There- 
fore, every being is one, true, and good. And in 
this reasoning the source of all is always being. 


6. Conclusion 


If the historians of philosophy were fully aware 
of this unity of the Thomistic metaphysics, they 
would not stop at the usual exposition of the dual- 
isms of medieval thought. The philosophy of St. 


Reh Clay ICO Spe NE AS weed 


Thomas,—we are told over and over again,—is a 
perfect dualism: God and the world, soul and body, 
reason and faith, sense and intellect, potency and 
act, matter and form, and so on. It is, of course, 
quite true that for St. Thomas God is not the world, 
the soul is not the body, and so forth. But such 
methods will not lead to an understanding of the 
unity of the Thomistic conception; for in this con- 
ception the notion of being, in the terminology of 
the School, is transcendental,—it goes beyond and 
transcends every special kind of being and is found 
again in each one: God is a being, I am a being, 
my pen is a being, my thought is a being. Quid- 
quid est, si quid est, ens est. And all these beings 
proceed from one single Being, which is the reason of 
all being. In the explanation and evaluation of an 
organism it is a shallow procedure to stop short at 
the number of members, without grasping the unity 
of the spirit that vivifies the whole. 

And it is to be well noted that, though being 
inspires the entire Thomistic system, this system 
has not even a distant kinship with Pantheism. 
The theory of the analogy of being cuts off every 
thread by which one would seek to establish a 
communication with Pantheistic views. The Be- 
ing of God is not the being of creatures, and this 
notwithstanding the fact that the second proceeds 
from the first. 


V2 BEING 


Dualism, in short, is a consequence of Thomism; 
it gives us the branches of the tree; but its vital 
principle stands fast in being conceived as ontologi- 
cal reality. Positivistic Phenomenalism and the 
modern theories of Voluntaristic Monism or of the 
Spirit as pure act are the utter negation of St. 
Thomas. Not indeed that St. Thomas overlooked 
the rights of thought and of the will. But for him 
one and the other alike are inconceivable without a 
being that thinks and wills. The ontological view- 
point is strenuously and constantly asserted in every 
part of his philosophical and theological system. 
Being exists in itself, and not in so far as it is 
thought or willed. The supreme Being, too, in 
whom thought is identical with essence, the “Thought 
of Thought,” too,—as Aristotle would have said,— 
is an ontological reality. Being is the word that 
sums up the whole Thomistic metaphysics. We 
shall see presently what riches of development and 
application it contains. 


CLL PERL LE 
BEING IN THE THEODICY OF ST. THOMAS 


His biographers relate that St. Thomas, when not 
yet five years old, was brought from Roccasecca, 
the family castle of the Counts of Aquino, to the 
neighboring monastery of Monte Cassino, where he 
remained for some years to receive his primary 
education. It was during this serene boyhood, 
passed in the busy silence of the historic cloister, 
that he was wont to run to the cells of the Fathers 
and ask with ingenuous anxiety: ‘‘What is God?” 

As the thought of God thus early quickened the 
future constructor of the two Summae, so later, as 
Grabmann has rightly established, “the center of the 
Thomistic world of thought is the idea of God. 
The knowledge of a supra-mundane, personal God 
is the superb crown of his metaphysics. The glance 
into the mysterious inner life of God... con- 
stitutes the highest degree of theological speculation.” 
It is St. Thomas himself who recognizes this in 
Contra Gentiles (I, c. 4), when he writes that 
“almost every philosophical question tends to the 

73 


74 BEING IN THEODICY: 


knowledge of God;” and in the Summa Theologica 
(Ia, qu. 1, art. 7), that “in sacred science (theology) 
all things are treated of under the formality of God, 
either because they are God Himself, or because they 
refer to God as their beginning and end.” 

But this theocentric character of the Thomistic 
doctrine must likewise be studied in function of the 
idea of being. In the ontological order God is the 
perfect Being, and, as we saw when we explained 
the conclusions of the entire metaphysics of St. 
Thomas, God is absolute Being, the source of all 
other things, of every degree of entity, and the 
ultimate explanation of the transcendental properties 
of being. In the order of knowledge it is from 
being by participation that St. Thomas rises to Being 
by essence. And being is the idea that explains 
to him the metaphysical nature of God, creation, 
and the conservation of things. In theodicy too, 
we have a synthesis reached by means of the idea of 
being. This we now proceed to show. 


1. The Existence of God 


After refuting the conceptualistic proof of God 
proposed by St. Anselm, because, as we saw, he 
could not approve the method of affirming being in 
the name of the idea, St. Thomas explains his 
famous proofs of the existence of God, or, as he de- 
scribes them, his “five ways for reaching God.” We 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 76 


recall the magnificent article in the Summa Theo- 
logica (la, qu. 2, art. 3), which has called forth a 
vast literature and is being discussed to-day with 
unquenchable animosity on the one side and unsub- 
dued admiration on the other. 

The validity of the well-known five arguments 
will be fully grasped if we view them in their 
historical origin and in the light of the one concept 
that informs them. 

1. As to their historical genesis, the power of the 
synthetic genius of St. Thomas is evident also in 
this matter. Inattention to this fact has led many 
contemporary thinkers to attribute to the five Thom- 
istic proofs a meaning they were never intended to 
have. 

The first proof, that of the immobile mover, is 
the perfect and definitive form of an argument first 
formulated by Anaxagoras, taken up again by Plato 
in the tenth book of the Laws, and developed by 
Aristotle in the twelfth book of his Metaphysics. 
Aristotle started from the fact, established against 
Parmenides, that becoming is a reality, and from 
a principle, upheld against Heraclitus, that becoming 
does not explain itself. But for the Stagirite the 
immobile mover was not the creator of matter, but 
only its ordainer; and in the interpretation of some 
he was an ordainer unconscious of his function. 
The “thought of thought,” happy in himself, moved 


76 BEING IN THEODICY 


beings as the immovable flag on the mountain-top 
sets in motion the army that wishes to reach it. 

St. Thomas rounds off and corrects this line of 
reasoning: with the same Aristotelian theory of 
movement,—which does not refer to local motion 
alone, but to every passage whatsoever from potency 
to act,—he reaches the pure act that explains be- 
coming, but does not itself become, does not pass 
from the potential to the actual because it is perfect 
actuality. 

The second and third proof from causality and 
contingence are a development of the fundamental 
conceptions of Aristotelian metaphysics. Aristotle, 
carrying the Platonic idea over into things, had 
shown the rationality of the real. The data of ex- 
perience can be resolved into their rational elements. 
Against Democritus and the Atomists he held that 
we must go beyond the empirical ascertainment of 
the phenomenon in order to interpret and understand 
it. And against Plato he maintained that this in- 
terpretation should be an explanation of the real, 
and not a separated idea. From the examination of 
phenomena,—and it matters little whether there is 
question of only one or of all the phenomena of the 
universe,—from the study of their essential charac- 
ters we come to know that they are caused and con- 
tingent, and with an affirmation that is essentially 


DEE ATS TENCE OnI GOD a7 


positive we conclude to the existence of an uncaused 
Cause and a necessary Being. ; 

The fourth argument from limited perfections is 
a step beyond the position of St. Augustine. By the 
rays we are led to the sun, no longer, however, in 
the name of an a priori principle, but by way of an 
a posteriori ascertainment of reality. The ex- 
istence of an imperfect reality, as the Stagirite had 
previously noted, calls for the perfection that can 
be its sufficient reason. 

The last proof,—that from finality,—is one into 
which Anaxagoras had already had an insight. It 
was developed by Socrates, appropriated by Plato, 
wonderfully improved by Aristotle, and finally 
matured by St. Augustine through the solution of 
the problem of evil. 

Once more it is evident that, at every point of 
his construction, St. Thomas gives us a synthesis. 
And I do not hesitate to add that in theodicy, too, 
—indeed, here more than elsewhere,—he inspires his 
synthesis with the idea of being. 

2. In point of fact, what is the idea that scin- 
tillates in these proofs for the existence of God? 

The five “ways” can be readily expressed in func- 
tion of the idea of being. 

The being that changes requires the existence of 
the Being that is, and does not become. The im- 


78 BEING IN THEODICY 


mobile mover is Being in its pure actuality. In the 
conception of the Supreme Prime Mover there is 
no other idea but that of being. 

Contingent being,—the being that can exist or not 
exist, in whose essential notes existence is not in- 
cluded,—exists, has being, in so far as there is a 
necessary Being, that is, a Being whose essence is 
existence. . 

The being that begins to exist, the effect, cannot 
find within itself the explanation of its existence. 
If it begins to be, it was not before; and if it did 
not exist, it could not give itself being. Therefore, 
it owes its being to the Supreme Cause, to the Being 
that has never begun to exist, that has not received 
its own being from another, that is Being a se. 

Limited and imperfect being, because of its very 
limitation and imperfection, cannot be Being itself. 
What is limited does not hold within itself the reason 
of its being. 

The finality of beings means the existence of a 
Being that is pure intelligence. 

In short, all these reasonings are founded on the 
idea of being. What is more, if we observe well, 
the very procedure of St. Thomas is always based 
on that idea. 

It was said with reason that in his five ‘‘ways’’ the 
Angelic Doctor starts from a fact, applies a principle, 
and reaches a conclusion. The fact is that of things 


PES PENG Hr One GOL: 79 


in the process of becoming, of caused beings, of con- 
tingence, of limited perfection, of order. The prin- 
ciple is: whatever moves is moved by another; the 
effect presupposes a cause; contingent being pre- 
supposes necessary being; the lower and the higher 
call for the existence of the highest; order points to 
an ordainer. The conclusion: therefore, God exists. 

So far so good. But there is also this to be noted: 
the initial fact always concerns being as given by 
experience, namely, the being that becomes, that 
begins, that could not be, that is circumscribed, 
that indicates finality. The principle is always one 
of the supreme laws of being examined in the pre- 
ceding chapter. The conclusion is an affirmation 
of the Being by essence, of the Being as pure act, 
@ se, necessary, perfect, intelligent. The point of 
departure is being, and the point of arrival is Being, 
by way of the laws of being. To overlook this 
fact is to debar oneself from understanding the mind 
of St. Thomas. 

In their critical discussions of the Thomistic argu- 
ments the moderns give evidence of missing this true 
meaning intended by the medieval thinker. If, for 
example, they are materialists, they will say that the 
motion of to-day depends on that of yesterday, and 
so on down the line, even unto infinity. With Kant 
they will aver that if every phenomenon has its 
cause in another phenomenon, then we can never 


80 BEING IN THEODICY 


come out of the phenomenal series. They will urge 
that the external manifestations of profound re- 
ality,—matter or spirit,—are indeed contingent, but 
that the atoms or the spiritual reality are eternal 
and necessary. They will point out that the argu- 
ment from the final causes proves an ordainer, but 
not a creator, of the world. 

One and all, these are criticisms that mistake the 
viewpoint of St. Thomas. For, when speaking of 
being, he refers not so much to the phenomenon em- 
pirically taken, to the accident, as, and above all, to 
the substance. For him being is not only the phe- 
nomenon that changes, that begins to be, that is 
caused, that is limited, that has the end intrinsic to 
itself. He is not even concerned about the length of 
the series of phenomena, and says that reason alone 
cannot prove that the world had a beginning. Even 
if the phenomenal series were infinite, this would not 
do away with the fact that being is in a state of 
change and betrays all the characteristics which go 
to prove that it is not the absolute. 

In short, to be properly evaluated, the five proofs 
presuppose an entire metaphysic. This latter in 
its turn, is the synthesis of a very long speculation, 
to be pondered in the light of the idea of being. As 
this idea, in the mind of St. Thomas, refers to a 
datum of assured fact, it precludes the confusing of 
the Thomistic arguments with the ontological proof 


THE NATURE OF (GOD 81 


of St. Anselm. Kant’s attempt to reduce the proofs 
of St. Thomas to the Anselmian proof is a futile 
one. It is not from the idea, but from reality, from 
being as existing, that St. Thomas takes his start ; 
and the pinions he uses in his flight are none other 
than the laws of being. 


2. The Nature of God 


The same holds true when St. Thomas passes 
from the problem of the existence of God to the 
question of His nature: he never loses sight of his 
great principle of being. 

Not all students and commentators of St. Thomas 
are of one mind concerning his teaching on the meta- 
physical essence of God. However, without plung- 
ing into subtle discussions, I believe that the logical 
thread of the whole Thomistic system should lead 
us to subscribe to the interpretation upheld among 
others by Cardinal Louis Billot, and before him 
admirably illuminated by Schiffini in the second 
volume of his Special Metaphysics. 

In what does the metaphysical essence of God 
consist ? 

By metaphysical essence the medieval Scholastics 
meant 

(a) that which primarily constitutes a being in 
its entity, 7. e., makes it what it is. 

(b) that which is the original root, the primal 


82 BEING IN THEODICY 


source from which all the properties and attributes 
applicable to the thing proceed ; 

(c) that which distinguishes a being from all 
others. 

In applying this definition to God and seeking the 
metaphysical constitutive of the Deity, the Scho- 
lastics were divided into various groups. Some 
placed it in actual intellection, others in radical infi- 
nity, or in the exigency of all perfections, or in the 
cumulus of every perfection; others assigned aseity 
(ens a se) as the metaphysical nature of God; others 
the supreme degree of intellectuality, or absolute 
divine immateriality. 

But, writes Grabmann, if we hold to what St. 
Thomas himself says about it, we must recognize 
the metaphysical concept of God in absolute being. 
God is the subsisting being itself, ipsum esse subsi- 
stens. This is the definition, observes the Summa 
Theologica (la, qu. 13, art. 11), which God gave 
of Himself: “I am who am, I am Being, Jahvé.” 
This is the conclusion,—as Aquinas inculcates in 
many other writings,—of our speculation about God, 
because it brings us to recognize that “the nature of 
God is nothing else than His being’ (De Ente et 
Fssentia, c. 6), that “in God His being is the same 
thing as His essence” (Comment. in Sent., I, dist. 
8, |. 1), and that His essence is His being: “sua 
igitur essentia est suum esse’ (Summa Theologica, 


THE NATURE OF GOD 83 


dapaiis, art, 4). in’ the? works of- oti Thomas 
we can readily find proof for the assertion that all 
those notes which constitute the metaphysical nature 
of God appertain to subsisting Being. 

In the first place, absolute being is that which, 
according to our manner of conception and expres- 
sion, primarily and positively makes God to be God. 

For St. Thomas, as we have often repeated, to 
speak of being is to speak of reality, perfection, 
actuality. Hence we argue: being and actuality 
coincide; but by its infinite perfection the divine 
essence is purest actuality; therefore, the divine 
essence is purest being—absolute, subsisting Being. 

All perfections, attributes, properties of God flow 
from this single source. “Secundum hoc enim 
dicitur aliquid esse perfectum, secundum quod est 
in actu’ (Summa Theologica, Ia, qu. 4, art. 1); 
that is, the degree of a being’s perfection depends 
on the degree of its actuality. Hence none of the 
perfections of being can be wanting to Him who is 
actuality itself, the subsisting Being. 

God, therefore, is perfect because the esse sub- 
sistens has the fulness of being, that is, of actuality, 
of perfection. 

God is the highest good because goodness and 
being coincide: “ens et bonum convertuntur.” As 
He is the highest being, He is also the highest good, 
—just as He is Truth by essence and One by essence. 


84 BEING IN THEODICY 


God is most simple because in what is composed 
there is potency and act. But in Him who is the 
absolute perfection of being, everything 1s, every- 
thing is act; there is no potency, and therefore no 
composition. 

God is infinite because, as He is Being itself, He 
can have no limitation in the line of being. 

God is eternal because the ipsum esse subsistens 
does not become, and hence has neither a past, nor 
a present, nor a future, but 7s. And for the same 
reason He is immutable. 

There is, in short, no divine attribute that does 
not depend on subsisting being; and from this it is 
clear why God is totally distinct from created, par- 
ticipated, limited being; the latter has being, but ts 
not Being. 

Absolute being, as Cardinal Billot and Grabmann 
rightly observe, is not to be confused with abstract 
universal being. “The absolute being of God means 
something real, concrete, personal, while universal 
being is a product of abstraction formally existing 
in the intellect and only fundamentally in reality; 
it results from the analysis of concepts taken from 
reality, and is like the ultimate element common to 
all things, and therefore predicable of all things. 
In De Ente et Essentia (cap. 6) Thomas himself 
has traced with precision the line of separation be- 


THE NATURE OF GOD 8s 


tween divine Being and abstract being. When we 
say, God is being, he remarks, we by no means 
fall into the error according to which God is abstract 
being. This abstract being is of such a nature that 
it cannot exist in its objective reality without ad- 
dition and determination, whereas, on the contrary, 
no reality whatsoever can be added to the absolutely 
subsisting divine Being. The ipsum esse, therefore, 
distinguishes God from created being, puts Him 
above all the categories of finite being, and acknowl- 
eges His absolute transcendence. This esse sub- 
sistens, aS the most real reality and the fulness it- 
self of being, places God at an infinite distance from 
the being that is abstract and devoid of objectivity.” 

“Tf we resolve this setting of the Thomistic con- 
ception of God into its historical elements,’ con- 
tinues Grabmann, “Thomas stands out as the theo- 
logian who achieved a synthesis on a grand scale. 
In his formative mind the thought of Aristotle and 
the speculations of Avicenna become united, bal- 
anced, and blended with Biblical ideas, with Patristic 
doctrines (Pseudo-Areopagite, Augustine, Hilary of 
Poitiers, John Damascene), and with views of the 
early Scholastics, like Anselm of Canterbury, Ber- 
nard of Clairvaux, and others. Under the skilled 
hand of the master these manifold historical threads 
are woven into a design of such uniformity that only 


86 BEING IN THEODICY 


a practiced eye can detect the particular color- 
ing and individual quality of these historical con- 
stituents.” 

It is clear, then, that also in discussing the nature 
of the perfect Being, the Thomistic synthesis has 
being as the word that sums up and the torch that 
lights the way. 

One more problem remained: the relation between 
Being and beings. It is the problem of the creation 
of things, of their conservation, and of the Provi- 
dence of God in the world and in history. In this 
field, too, St. Thomas is true to himself. He re- 
mains loyal alike to his synthetic method and his 
supreme principle. 


3. Creation 


The problem of creation is discussed by St. 
Thomas at some length in questions 44-46 of the 
first part of the Summa Theologica, which I shall 
follow in this chapter, with additions from the 
Quaestiones Disputatae, De Potentia, and the small 
philosophical work, De Aeternitate Mundi Contra 
Murmurantes. 

The idea of being runs through the Thomistic 
teaching also on this point. For the very concept 
of creation, the proof for the fact, the causes and 
the time of creation are permeated by this single 
thought. 


CREATION 87 


1. The concept of creation is reducible to the 
concept of being. For, in the mind of St. Thomas, 
to create is to make something out of nothing, (“ex 
mihilo aliquid facere”’). Creation is the production 
of being as being, because it is nothing else than the 
passage from non-being to being, and consists in the 
origin of all beings from the Being that is absolute 
and self-subsisting. It differs from human “cre- 
ations,” as they are sometimes improperly called, 
in which there is only the transformation of an es- 
sence, of pre-existing matter through the production 
of a new form. In divine creation nothing what- 
ever pre-exists; the entire being is produced without 
any of its elements existing previously,—the whole 
being flows from the first and universal source. 
Take away from this doctrine the concept of be- 
ing, and it would crumble and lose its meaning. In 
the concept of creation shines the concept of be- 
ing. 

2. We recognize the same fact when we inquire 
into the proofs by which St. Thomas has shown, as 
a philosopher, that the universe was created. 

Aristotle had said in the second book of his Meta- 
physics that that which is being in the highest degree, 
is the cause of all being. In his commentary on this 
passage St. Thomas says that contingent beings have 
not the reason of their being in themselves, and can- 
not but have been created. Had they not been cre- 


88 BEING IN THEODICY 


ated, they would no longer be contingent, but neces- 
sary Being. The latter, however, is one and 
unique, because necessary Being means the fulness 
of being, perfect actuality. If there were two neces- 
sary Beings, the one would not have the being of 
the other, and neither of the two would be the ful- 
ness and perfection of being. 

So the investigation of things through their 
character of contingency, changes, and limitations 
reveals that they must needs have been created, and 
proves the existence of a single Creator. This holds 
true of primal matter as well, added St. Thomas 
by way of explanation on a page admirable alike 
for its depth and for that historic sense which al- 
ways attended his philosophic speculations. 

Philosophy, he observes, came to the conquest of 
truth step by step, and gradually arrived at the con- 
cept of creation. 

The thinkers of antiquity, when dealing with 
nature, assigned purely accidental causes to the proc- 
ess of becoming, to the production of new beings, 
and so remained on the surface of the problem by 
explaining only accidental changes. Subsequently, 
especially with Aristotle, thought went deeper. It 
was now understood that there are essential changes, 
that new substantial forms come into being and, by 
uniting themselves to an identical substratum, 7. e¢., 
primary matter, originate and produce new beings. 


CREATION 89 


In this manner particular agents were assigned as 
causes for explaining this being, or why this being 
is such and not different. Philosophers had not yet 
reached the point of considering being as being, or 
of investigating the causes of beings in so far as 
they are beings, but only in so far as they are these 
or such beings. When the problem was stated, it 
became clear that it was not enough to find the 
reason in accidental causes or substantial forms: 
it was necessary to trace things to the source and 
cause of the whole being. Pure potency, primary 
matter, could then no longer be looked upon as 
existing of necessity; for this perfectible element 
creation appeared even more indispensable than for 
the formal element. 

Once more we have a synthesis, and that by means 
of the idea of being. 

3. Nor do matters stand otherwise when we seek 
for the causes of creation. 

St. Augustine,—whom St. Thomas quotes with 
approval in the Summa Theologica (Ja, qu. 15, art. 
1),—had attributed such power to the Platonic doc- 
trine of ideas as to say that one could not become a 
philosopher and attain to wisdom unless one under- 
stood them (“tanta vis in ideis constituitur, ut, nist 
his intellectis, sapiens esse nemo potest’). It is 
precisely by going beyond Plato’s doctrine of ideas 
that St. Thomas begins his explanation of the man- 


90 BEING IN THEODICY 


ner of creation. He does this by accepting the 
interpretation of St. Augustine and even attempting 
to harmonize the teaching of Aristotle with it (cfr. 
In Anristotelis Nonnullos Libros Comment., t. 4). 

Plato had recognized ideas as ontological realities ; 
which existed in themselves, independently of God 
and of creatures. St. Augustine, instead, credited 
Plato with teaching that the ideas did indeed exist 
separately from things, but were identical with the 
Divine Essence. And together with St. Augustine, 
Aquinas upheld the necessity of placing ideas of all 
things in the Divine Mind. 

When one does not operate by chance, he writes, 
the form produced pre-exists in us either ac- 
cording to its natural being, as when one man gener- 
ates another, or according to its intelligible existence, 
as when the idea of the building exists in the mind of 
the builder. Now, as the world is not made by 
chance but by God, who acts with His intellect, the 
form or the idea to the likeness of which the world 
is created must exist in the divine mind. 

God, therefore, urges St. Thomas (qu. 44, art. 
3), is the prime exemplar of all things. In the 
divine wisdom that conceived the order of the uni- 
verse exist the reasons of all beings, which, though - 
multiplied in respect of things, are really nothing 
else than God’s essence, in so far as He is the fulness 


CREATION 91 


of being and hence His likeness can be participated in 
by the most diverse number of beings. 

By knowing Himself God knows everything 
else (“Deus intelligendo se intelligit omma alia’). 
When this divine contemplation of things is followed 
by an act of the divine will, which makes things to 
pass from nothingness to being, then we have cre- 
ation, and its final cause is none other than God 
Himself. Whereas we act for the sake of acquir- 
ing some perfection, and hence for an end distinct 
from ourselves, God, as the fulness of being and 
pure actuality, can acquire nothing. He can only 
communicate His perfection to others: as every 
creature receives its perfection from God, so it tends 
towards Him as its last end. 

For this reason creation is a participation and 
imitation of Being. Absolute Being is the efficient, 
the exemplary, the final cause of beings. As to 
their origin, these owe all their being to the first 
and perfect Being. As to their constitutive nature 
and their entity, they are an imitation of Being. 
As to their end, they yearn for Being by a progres- 
sive and continuous perfective process. 

4. It was on the basis of his concept of being 
that St. Thomas defended the thesis of the possi- 
bility of a world created from etermty. While Faith 
teaches that the creation of the world took place 


92 BEING IN THEODICY 


in time, reason can adduce no decisive proofs in this 
debate. 

My observation of the nature of contingent things 
yields nothing to convince me that they must have 
had a beginning in time. Considering the will of 
God, the cause of beings, I find no reason what- 
ever why God should of necessity have willed that 
these beings begin in time. The only point that I 
find certain in examining beings is, not that they 
must have begun in time, but that they are 
contingent. Reason, as Moses Maimonides and the 
Arabian and Mohammedan philosophers maintained, 
cannot prove apodictically the impossibility of cre- 
ation from eternity. Provided the existence of 
Being by essence be admitted and demonstrated, St. 
Thomas could come upon no apodictical argument, 
—neither in Being nor in beings,—that would ex- 
clude the being by participation from an existence 
without beginning. Hence his position; it seemed 
bold, but was consistent with his entire system and 
with all his ideas about creation, in which, I repeat, 
there is nothing that is not reduced to the conception 
of being. 


4. Divine Government 


The Being by essence cannot be conceived as a 
capricious God, who, after having created the world, 
abandons it to itself. Everything subsists in God, 


DIVINE GOVERNMENT 93 


conserved and governed by Him under the influence 
of His Providence; the being by participation con- 
tinues in existence and develops in virtue of the 
creative force itself, which extends to the act of 
conservation and to providential governance. Such 
are the well-known theses defended by St. Thomas 
in his theodicy. Here, too, I propose to call at- 
tention to the fact that they are nothing but the 
elaboration and inexorable development of his 
principal idea of being. To do this I have but to 
summarize some articles of the Summa Theo- 
logica. 

According to St. Thomas, beings would not only 
not exist if the absolute Being had not created them, 
but they would fall back into nothingness if they 
were not conserved in being by God. “Both reason 
and faith force us to say that creatures are kept in 
being by God. ‘To make this clear we must consider 
that a thing is preserved by another in two ways. 
First, indirectly and through something else (per 
accidens ) ; thus a person is said to preserve anything 
by removing the cause of its corruption, as a man 
may be said to preserve a child whom he guards 
from falling into the fire. In this way God pre- 
serves some things, but not all, for there are some 
things of such a nature that nothing can corrupt 
them, so that it is not necessary to keep them from 
corruption. Secondly, a thing is said to preserve an- 


04 BEING IN THEODICY 


other directly and in itself, namely, when what is 
preserved depends on the preserver in such a way 
that it cannot exist without him. In this manner all 
creatures need to be preserved by God. For the 
being of every creature depends on God, so that not 
for a moment could it subsist, but would fall into 
nothingness, were it not kept in being by the oper- 
ation of the divine power.” 

Such is the thesis, stated in terms of being. The 
proof, too, is developed along the same lines: 

“Every effect depends on its cause, so far as it is 
its cause. But we must observe that an agent may 
be the cause of the becoming of its effect, not directly 
of its being. ‘This may be seen both in artificial 
and in natural things: for the builder causes the 
house in its becoming, but he is not the direct cause 
of its beimg. For it is clear that the being of the 
house is the result of its form, which consists in the 
putting together and arrangement of the materials, 
and results from the natural qualities of certain 
things. . . . A builder constructs a house by mak- 
ing use of cement, stones, and wood, . . . and the 
being of a house depends on the nature of these 
materials, just as its becoming depends on the action 
of the builder. ‘The same principle applies to natural 
ELI Sat) 

“Therefore as the becoming, the production of a 
thing cannot continue when that action of the agent 


DIVINE GOVERNMENT 95 


ceases which causes the becoming of the effect, so 
neither can the being of a thing continue after that 
action of the agent has ceased, which is the cause 
of the effect, not only in becoming but also in 
being. . . . Every creature may be compared to God 
as the air to the sun which enlightens it. For as 
the sun possesses light by its nature, and as the air 
is enlightened by having the sun’s nature, so God 
alone is Being by virtue of His own essence, since 
His essence is His existence, whereas every creature 
has being by participation” (Summa Theologica, fa, 
Gus TO4) art.:1). 

It is clear, then, that St. Thomas infers the divine 
conservation of the world and of all created things 
from the analysis of being. It is equally evident 
that another consequence of his initial standpoint is 
that other Thomistic doctrine of the co-operation of 
God with all free and non-free actions of His crea- 
tures. “Because in all things God Himself is prop- 
erly the cause of the very being which is innermost 
in all things, it follows that God works intimately 
ieeverye thing. (qi 105, art. 5), And, adds)ot 
iiomas (la; qu. /83 vart:. 1)! inasmuch, as. God 
operates in each being according to the nature of this 
same being, His co-operation with the actions of 
creatures does not hinder certain human acts from 
being free; on the contrary, it is precisely this that 
makes them free. And so even the question of 


96 BEING IN THEODICY 


the possibility of reconciling divine concurrence with 
human freedom is solved by St. Thomas in the light 
of being,—not abstract, but taken concretely in its 
true reality. 

I translate another article of the Summa The- 
ologica (Ia, qu. 22, art. 2) for the purpose of show- 
ing how the same procedure was adopted by St. 
Thomas in his teaching on Providence: ‘“‘We must 
say that all things are subject to Divine Providence, 
not only in general, but even in their own individual 
selves. This is clear, for since every agent acts for 
an end, the arrangement of effects towards that end 
extends as far as the causality of the first agent 
extends. When it happens that in the effects of an 
agent something takes place which has no reference 
to the end, this is due to the fact that this effect 
comes from a cause other than, and outside the 
intention of, the agent. But the causality of God, 
who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only 
as to the constituent principles of species, but also 
as to the individualizing principles, not only of 
things subject to corruption, but also of things 
not so subject. Hence all things that exist in what- 
soever manner are necessarily directed by God to- 
wards some end, as the Apostle says: Those that 
are, are ordained of God (Rom. XIII, 1). Since, 
therefore, the Providence of God is nothing less 
than the fixed plan of things towards an end (ratio 


DIVINE GOVERNMENT 97 


ordims rerum in finem), it necessarily follows that 
all things, imasmuch as they participate beimg, must 
likewise be subject to Divine Providence.’”’ This 
Providence, he adds in article 4, “imposes necessity 
upon some things, not upon all, as some formerly 
believed. For to Providence it belongs to order 
things towards anend. After the Divine Goodness, 
which is an extrinsic end to all things, the principle 
good in things themselves is the perfection of the 
universe; and this would not be, were not all grades 
of being found in things. Whence it pertains to D1- 
vine Providence to produce every grade of being. 
So it has prepared necessary causes for some things, 
so that they happen of necessity; for others con- 
tingent causes, that they may happen by contingence 
(freely), according to the disposition of their proxi- 
mate causes.” 

In Divine Providence, then, everything is reduced 
to being. He who provides is Being. The object 
of Providence are beings. The reason for Provi- 
dence is the dependence of beings on Being as to 
their being. The manner in which Providence 
works corresponds to the nature of the beings them- 
selves. The government of God, by means of 
which His world-plan is actualized, if not immedi- 
ate,—inasmuch as it is realized through intermediate 
created causes, with Him governing the lower by 
means of the higher,—has, nevertheless, in its final 


98 BEING IN THEODICY 


analysis, absolute Being as its alpha and omega, 
even though the intermediate letters are placed by 
creatures. The whole Christian theodicy, which 
had already found worthy exponents among the 
Fathers, is thus summed up by St. Thomas from 
his single viewpoint. 


CHAPTER IV 


BEING IN THE OTHER PARTS OF THOMISTIC 
PHILOSOPHY 


Not only metaphysics, but logic, psychology, 
ethics, and all other parts of the philosophy of St. 
Thomas are a synthesis inspired by the idea of being. 
I shall restrict myself to brief indications, as I trust 
that the extended discussion of Thomistic theodicy 
and its reduction to a single idea has offered sufficient 
proof of my thesis. 


1. Logic 


Beginning with logic, whose subject-matter is the 
ens rationis,—being of the mind (here, too, we al- 
ways meet with being),—it is well-known that 
Aquinas, following Aristotle, distinguished three 
operations of our mind: simplex apprehensio, 
dicium, ratiocinium,—idea, judgment, reason- 
ing. 

“The essence of the idea as such,” in the very 
apposite words of Garrigou-Lagrange, “whether 
human, angelic, or divine, is to contain the formal 
object of intelligence, qua intelligence (human, an- 

99 


100 THOMITSTIGAG iG Ss Or ins 


gelic, or divine), that 1s to say, being or reason of 
being.” 

In man alone the idea is abstract and universal, 
as we shall see presently. But this property of the 
idea in our intelligence is not an essential constituent, 
but a defect of the human mind. Intelligence as 
such consists in its relation to being: obtectum 
formale intellectus est ens,—the formal object of 
the intellect is being, and intelligence reaches noth- 
ing except from the viewpoint of being. 

While the senses perceive the diverse material 
elements, the idea mirrors the reason of being of 
these elements, the quod quid est, the ratio intima 
proprietatum,— the innermost reason of these prop- 
erties. And in us the idea is imperfect, abstract, 
universal, because our intellect does not embrace the 
whole being of the thing, but only one aspect, the 
quidditas ret materilis abstracta a notis individu- 
antibus,—the essence of material things as ab- 
stracted from the individualizing notes. 

Judgment, the second operation of the mind, in- 
dicates still better, if possible, that the formal object 
of the intellect is being. The soul of every judg- 
ment is the verb to be, which affirms the logical 
identity of subject and predicate. The verb to be 
tells us that what is designated by the subject and 
what is designated by the predicate are logically one 
and the same being. And in this manner judgment 


PSYCHOLOGY tol 


feunites and restores to being what abstraction had 
‘separated. 

By ratiocination, finally, we come to see the ex- 
trinsic reason of being of the less known in what is 
known already. 

“Tf, then, the proper object of the human intellect, 
im so far as it is human, is, as we shall see later, the 
essence of material things, its formal and adequate 
object, in so far as it is intelligence, 1s being with- 
out restriction, and this permits it in a certain man- 
ner to know all beings, everything that has a reason 
of being” (Summa Theol., Ia, qu. 12, art. 4). By 
simple apprehension man not only perceives the be- 
ing that surrounds him, but also what it is (quid 
sit). By judgment he not only associates sensations 
and images, but decides whether a thing 1s or ts not 
(an sit). By reasoning he gives the reason of be- 
ing of what he affirms or denies (propter quid). 
In each of these three operations,—concludes the 
author quoted, in his commentary on the logic of 
St. Thomas,—the object of intelligence is nothing 
else than being. 


2. Psychology 


Having established this much, St. Thomas in his 
psychological doctrines infers therefrom the spiritu- 
ality and immortality of the soul. 

In his Metaphysics (1. x, c. III) Aristotle had 


102 THOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY 


described the three degrees of abstraction which 
are recalled by St. Thomas in his Commentary on 
the Metaphysics (lib. XI, lect. 3). 

In the natural sciences we abstract from sensible 
individual matter, though not from common sensible 
matter. The chemist prescinds, or abstracts from 
the particular character of this atom of hydrogen, 
and searches for the properties of the atom of hy- 
drogen in general. 

In mathematics we abstract also from common 
sensible matter and attend only to quantity, con- 
tinuous and discrete. 

In metaphysics abstraction is made from all mat- 
ter whatsoever, so as to consider being as such, to- 
gether with its principles. 

Our intelligence, therefore, is wholly immaterial, 
“est penitus immaterialis,’ concludes St. Thomas in 
the Summa Theologica (la, qu. 50, art. 2; q. 75, 
passim), and in Metaphysics (lib. I, lect. 1-3; lib. 
XI, lect. “2, “ete.) Though ‘the mntellectdepence 
extrinsically on the body, inasmuch as it cannot 
think without images, it is not intrinsically de- 
pendent on any material organ. 

We must therefore admit: 

(1) that the soul is immaterial, spiritual, because 
being independent of matter in its operation, it is 
likewise independent of it in its being; 

(2) that the soul is immortal: its being does not 


ETHICS 103% 


depend on the body, therefore it can exist without 
the body; 

(3) that the soul is created by God (Summa 
Theol., Ia, qu. 90, art. 2), because, as it does not 
depend on matter in its being, it cannot depend on 
matter in its coming into being. 

This most intimate relation between the con- 
ception of being and the Thomistic psychology, as 
Garrigou-Lagrange again remarks, is frequently 
overlooked by Catholic writers. But it is only from 
this standpoint that we can really get to the bottom 
of all the teachings of St. Thomas. When, for 
example, he faces the problem of free-will and does 
not admit our freedom as regards the good in 
general and the fullness of being, but recognizes it 
as to particular goods, that is, as to limited beings, 
—1it is readily seen that he invariably puts and solves 
the question from the standpoint of being. 


3. Ethics 


Just as the relations between God and the world 
appeared to St. Thomas in the light of this idea, so 
his ethics, or the relations of beings with one another 
and with God, could not but be conceived by him 
after the same fashion. 

For Aquinas there are no value-judgments that 
are not being-judgments (7. e., existential). His 
ethics and his metaphysics interpenetrate each other 


104 THOMISTIC PRILOsSOrPAY 


in the most intimate manner,—a profound con- 
nection clearly grasped by Martin Grabmann. 
Every action is good in the degree in which it par- 
takes of being, that is, in so far as it possesses the 
requisite perfection; while the lack of this being, of 
this perfection which is its due, constitutes the con- 
cept of moral evil. The object of the will is being 
under the abstract» formality of goodness, just as 
the object of the intellect is being in so far as true. 
The will aspires to the good, to Being, never resting 
satished until it has attained to its full possession. 
Our actions are objectively good or bad, according 
as we respect or not the gradation or the relations 
of the various degrees of entity. Thus man must 
be subordinate to God because participated being 
is subject to Being by essence. Men among them- 
selves are bound by relations which are always de- 
termined by the nature of being, that is, by the human 
person and by dependence on the will of God. 
Finally, we may make use of other beings if, and 
in so far as, we do not disturb the order called for 
by the various degrees of entity. And an act is 
subjectively good or bad according as we act with 
the consciousness of such order. Moral evil, sin, is 
a breach of the order established by the Creator ; 
it consists in not acknowledging in practice and 
trampling upon the value of beings and their co- 
ordination in reference to the supreme Being. 


WEES 105 


Goodness and virtue, on the contrary, consist in the 
observance of the order flowing from the nature of 
being. 

In his political teaching Aquinas is far from 
being aprioristic, but with a keen sense of reality 
founds his theories on the actualities of human life, 
so much so that many principles of his philosophy 
of law and many social and political doctrines are as 
fresh to-day as ever. On the very nature of man 
he grounds the origin, the motive, and the necessity 
of social authority as presented in the father of 
the family, the head of a community, or the sover- 
eign of a country. In discussing the rights and 
duties of property he formulates principles that still 
have the greatest actuality. Well may we ask: to 
what is due all this richness and depth of ideas? 
To his constant application of the concept of being. 
To any one who views the systematic construction 
of St. Thomas as a whole, this concept cannot but 
appear as one of essential importance. 


GELAR ERAN: 


BEING AND THE INTELLECTUALISM OF 
_ST. THOMAS 


To-pay the term “‘intellectualism’” smacks of dis- 
dain and condemnation on the lips of many philoso- 
phers. It is often hurled against St. Thomas, as 
though he had given us a system of empty, static, 
cold abstractions, wholly inadequate for the richness 
of reality and history. 

At times, however, the word is used to indicate 
the primacy of thought over action,—and it is in 
this sense that I use it here, guided by Pierre Rous- 
selot’s excellent work on L’/ntellectualisme de Saint- 
Thomas. It is the intellect and not the other facul- 
ties of the mind by means of which the intellectualist 
seeks to reach a profound penetration of reality. 
The intellect alone thinks, and it alone can give us 
truth. The will, too, and action and life are objects 
of knowledge, with which they are intrinsically and 
organically connected; but they cannot usurp the 
intellectual function, for this 1s reserved to our 
rational energies. 

106 


Cert MACY OP CTH ET ENT BLE CTY 1107 


It is the aim of this chapter to investigate whether 
St. Thomas adopted and championed such an intel- 
lectualism, to trace its limits, and above all to dwell 
on our knowledge of the individual and of history 
in the Thomistic conception,—so as to show how 
St. Thomas solved all these problems in reference 
to being. 


1. St. Thomas the Intellectualist 


There is no doubt that St. Thomas asserted the 
primacy of the intellect. 

In his teleological vision of reality he upheld a 
like primacy in man’s last end, in the future life; it 
was evident that with such a goal to reach, the pres- 
ent life, too, would have to be suffused with the 
same light. 

As in the hypothesis of a purely natural order, 
the supreme happiness of man would have been intel- 
lectual, though not supernatural (De Anima, qu. 
17-20), so after the elevation of man to a state su- 
perior to his nature, the vision of God, the con- 
templation of infinite Being face to face,—which 
constitutes the supernatural happiness of Heaven, 
—is an intellectual act. The essence of beatitude 
consists in an operation of the intellect; it is through 
it that the will finds its joy and repose attained in 
the end (Summa Theologica, Ia Iae, qu. 3, art. 4). 
In the Thomistic system, observes Rousselot, the 


108 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


intuitive vision, this gracious gift of Heaven, sets 
the crown of supreme triumph on intellectualism 
as conceived by St. Thomas. Paradise is the 
victory of thought. Being in its infinite grandeur 
is seen intuitively. This knowledge makes us eter- 
nally happy, because now we no longer strain to- 
wards something not possessed (which causes the 
sense of privation and pain), but have the tranquil 
possession, the immobile act, the full repose. In 
the view of St. Thomas beatitude cannot consist in 
an act of the will, where Scotus placed it. For the 
will is an appetitive force, which tends towards 
an object; and in so far as it tends, it is moved, it 
desires; hence privation and unhappiness. In the 
intellectual act alone do we have the attainment of 
the end, possession, perfect joy. And so the intel- 
lectualism of St. Thomas is assured even for Para- 
dise. 

In this world, of course, knowledge, thought, has 
an immense value and an indisputable primacy over 
action and will. 

To the mind of St. Thomas the idea, knowledge, 
is of inestimable worth also in the natural order. 
Even when there is question of the lowlier sciences, 
he who despises them, despises humanity (1 Meteor., 
IV, lib. I.; De Trimtate 6, 1). All knowledge in 
itself is of the genus of things that are good; evil, 
in so far as it is the object of knowledge, is good 


WHEE RIMACY OH DHE INTELLECT) t09 


66s 


because “it is a good thing to have a knowledge of 
eee HW eriiate, 2;'.5," 4, and 22) 15 ach aw alt 
science and art are subject to the moral law as to 
their evercise, they are independent of it as to their 
specification. (Summa Theologica, Ia Tae, qu. 21, 
eee ad yas: 57.art, 2 bl layiaey qui) zr atte, 
gamle) iinica, lib 4. WPoltylib. 11)a sl herpri- 
macy and extrinsic excellence of speculation are in- 
variably affirmed. And in the Contra Gentiles (III, 
cap. 25), after repeated eulogies of thought, St. 
Thomas proclaims: ‘The practical arts are ordered 
to the speculative, and similarly every human opera- 
tion to intellectual speculation as to an end.” 

Will and action are not undervalued, but sub- 
ordinated. 

First of all, every really human action is satu- 
rated with intellectuality. We are truly men when 
we strive to act in conformity with our rational 
nature, by subduing our animal instincts, and im- 
pregnating being and action with thought. This 
victory over the body by means of the mind, this 
penetration of the idea into the field of practical 
activity, sums up the entire moral teaching of St. 
Thomas: man’s goodness consists in living according 
to reason. Then we have the axiom, fundamental 
in Thomism: “Nil volitum nisi praecognitum,”— 
nothing is willed unless it is first known. Thought 
goes before the deliberation of the will and before 


110 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


fulfillment; and the more an action is illumined by 
the light of thought, the more voluntary and, there- . 
fore, the more free it becomes. In commenting on 
the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans 
St. Thomas expressly says: ‘Because intelligence 
moves the will, willing is an effect of knowing.” 
Without intelligence there would be no will. ‘“Tgnoti 
nulla cupido,’—men do not desire the unknown. 
And the whole Thomistic philosophy teaches us to 
be concerned above all about ideas, about the head. 
Of little avail is a howling mob or a cackling crowd; 
it is the idea that counts. It is the idea that rules 
the world because it guides the will. St. Thomas 
was so profoundly convinced of this that he did 
not hesitate to assert that the sacrifices of men of 
action, of priests having the care of souls, though 
necessary labors, were less noble than the work 
of the scholar and the thinker. The former are 
“quast manuales operari,’—like manual laborers, 
the latter are the architects. 

The will, after all, is nothing else than the incli- 
nation that follows upon intellectual apprehension. 
It is the intellective appetency, the faculty that 
tends towards the object after it is known. Volun- 
tary operation has, therefore, an essential reference 
to the intellect. 

To be sure, the will in its turn moves the intel- 
lect, as our consciousness testifies. Daily the will 


Die RINMAGY ORV PH ERVIN TERT BGP wvrrd 


bids the intellect to reflect or not to reflect on a given 
object. But there is a difference not to be over- 
looked: the intellect moves the will quoad specifica- 
tionem actus, 1. e., by inducing it to the performance 
of this or that particular action. The will, on the 
contrary, moves the intellect only quoad exercitium 
actus, 1. e., whether to apply itself or not to the con- 
sideration of the object. 

This, however, holds good in the domain of 
action. When there is question of performing an 
internal or external act, the will intervenes to fulfill 
a trust of its own, which, however, is well circum- 
scribed. But when truth and the task of cognition 
are concerned, the intellect alone is competent. The 
will can and should apply the intellect to the study 
of truth. It can and should order the necessary 
moral preparation and the removal of all obstacles 
that stand in the way of calm and clear vision; and 
this preparatory phase, to use the words of Plato, 
calls for all possible fervor, for the whole soul. But 
the truth is grasped by a purely intellectual act. 
Appentencies, tendencies, sentiments, will, human in- 
stincts, emotion, heart, action,—all these have no 
cognitive task to fulfill; they are not competent 
in the domain of knowledge as such. As one does 
not reason with his feet, so neither does one think 
with his heart. In the final analysis, it is intellect 
alone that judges. It will have to take account of 


112 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


everything else, action included. It may be influ- 
enced by passions that will deprive it of the necessary 
serenity. But it is not the will, nor life, nor action, 
that can give us truth.t On the contrary, to judge 
of life and of action, thought is necessary; as 
thought controls the data of sense, so it examines 
the value of life and action. 

Without intelligence, free-will itself would be in- 
conceivable. The animal is not free because it can- 
not judge its own judgment and is ignorant of the 
reason thereof. Man is free because he has knowl- 
edge, and his will is proportioned to his intellection. 
An object is willed as it is known by the intellect and 
proposed as desirable; it is loved or shunned if, and 
in so far as, it is understood to be lovable or unde- 
sirable. For this reason we are not free in regard 
to the good that is presented to the mind as the 
absolute good, and as lovable under every respect, so 
that it cannot be judged as being other than such; 
the universal good calls forth a necessary love, and 
the will cannot but be carried towards it. Hence all 
must needs desire happiness,—even the suicide, who 
seeks ‘peace' in ‘death... Nor are’ we )iree; pasa 
Mattiussi well says, when those natural movements 
of the will take place in us which precede reflection 
and betoken the apprehension of some object under 


1Cfr. Heinrich Rickert, Philosophie des Lebens (Tubingen, 
1922) (ier) 


Ak NAGY SOL tH HOrN PR PEE Gle iri 


the appearance of a pure good, or the lack of atten- 
tion to defects and contrary qualities. We are free 
only when we have freedom of judgment. Con- 
fronted by a good that we apprehend, not as absolute, 
but as desirable from one viewpoint and undesirable 
from another, the will can so influence the intellect, 
that,—when there is question of judging a thing 
in reference to practice and not speculatively only, 
—it fixes on this or that judgment. It is not the 
object, then, that determines the will; nor do the 
motives bring this about; “instead, it is for the will 
to determine itself: it may, if it so pleases, consider 
even the greater good in so far as it is defective and 
non-compelling (because not absolute), and the 
objectively inferior good in so far as it is desirable 
and conducive to well-being. Thus it can choose 
between two things equally good; it can give pref- 
erence to the inferior as between two unequal ones, 
—not precisely because it wishes the inferiority of 
the one as compared with the other, but because it 
regards this as the opportune choice.” ? 

Here an objection might be raised: If thought 
guides action, if will presupposes intellect, is it not 
true, after all, that knowledge is there for the sake 
of life, and not as an end in itself? Does not the 

1Cfr. the chapter on Self-determination in The Problem of 


Evil and Human Destiny, Zimmermann-Zybura, St. Louis, 
1924. (Tr.) 


1144. INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


Summa Theologica teach (Ila Ilae, qu. 182, art. 1) 
that, ‘though the contemplative life is more excellent 
in itself, nevertheless under given circumstances the 
active life is to be preferred because of the demands 
of the present life; thus also the Philosopher says 
that philosophizing is better than enriching oneself, 
though the latter is better for one in need.” 

But this should not mislead us. Aristotle had 
announced a twofold programme: “Science for the 
sake of science’ and “Science for the sake of life.” 
In this matter, too, St. Thomas reached a synthesis 
consonant with Christian thought and frankly intel- 
lectualistic. 

He does not deny that one must think in order to 
act, and act well. Quite the contrary. But at the 
same time he observes that thought and action are 
not the supreme aim of man here below. His ulti- 
mate end is the intuitive vision of God; in other 
words, it is an intellectual act by means of which we 
shall have achieved the possession of Being. Faith 
and reason, grace and natural means, philosophy, 
theology, practical life, religious, political, and civil 
activity,—all these must be subordinated to that end. 
Intelligence, therefore, which is the root of all our 
activity, is likewise the goal to which our activity 
leads us. It is the alpha and the omega. Hence 
we must acknowledge that if by intellectualism one 


Ure RIM ACY OM DHE CIN TELE BCT 11s 


means the primacy of the intellect, no one was ever 
more an intellectualist than St. Thomas. 

Nor could he be of a different mind who in his 
Contra Gentiles (IV, c. 11) and in numerous pas- 
sages of his other works describes being as an ascent 
toward intelligence, as a succession of ever higher 
forms which, through a process gradually leading to 
an ever greater inwardness, culminates in the intel- 
ligent being. 

As a matter of fact, from inanimate bodies, where 
there is nothing but the action of one body upon 
another, we pass on to plants, in which emanation 
proceeds from within, inasmuch as they move them- 
selves and not only things external to themselves. 
For all that, plant life is imperfect because the ema- 
nation, even though proceeding from their innermost 
soul, ends in the flower and the fruit which detach 
themselves from the tree; the beginning, too, of this 
emanation, the tree’s moisture, is drawn up from the 
earth by means of the roots. In animals emanation 
begins from without, from the sense-stimulus, but 
ends within, in the imagination and the memory. 
Here the beginning and the end of emanation belong 
to two different things because no sensitive power 
can reflect upon itself, and the emanation always 
takes place from one in the other. Finally, “there 
is the highest and most perfect grade of life, that 


116 INTELERCTUALISM OF STetHokwes 


of the intellect, for the intellect turns back upon and 
can understand itself.” Though, as we shail see, 
there are various grades of intellectual life, intel- 
lect always has this characteristic, that its operation 
is in the highest degree immanent. It is not an 
extrinsic action; nor is it an immanent action that 
begins from without and ends outwardly; nor one 
that begins from without and terminates inwardly: 
it is an action that has its beginning and end within 
itself. 

Intelligence, therefore, is the highest grade of 
life; it is a life and what is*most perfect in life. 
Through intelligence we are not only we, but we en- 
rich ourselves. Life means the acquisition of 
another through a principle of immanence. By 
living, other beings unite themselves to us: but while 
in the vegetative life they unite themselves to be- 
come detached, while in the sensitive life (Lub. 
Sent., 1V, Dist., 49, q. 3, art. 5), sense is only sus 
perficially united to things, the intellect, on the con- 
trary, “pertingit usque ad intimam rei quidditatem,” 
—reaches down to the innermost essence of being, 
assimilates all being, and quodammodo fit omnia,— 
in some certain manner becomes all things (Contra 
Gentiles, 1} c)44.; 1];'c. 47 and 98; Dist) ce) 3yqmae 
art. 4; Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 26, art. 2). The 
intellect is the faculty assimilative of being and the 
faculty capable of reflecting upon itself and of 


Pie NN ACY. OR eT HE IN TELUBRG LT: (117 


understanding itself. And this constitutes the 
highest perfection of being. 

“Being,” St. Thomas teaches (De Anima, lib. 5), 
“is twofold, material and immaterial. Through 
material being every thing is merely what it is; 
this stone is this stone and nothing more. But 
through immaterial being, which is ample and as if 
infinite because not limited by matter, a thing is not 
only what it is; in some way it is all beings like- 
Meese nCselsewheren (a) pusc..y250 Cuil!) seme nue 
human soul in some certain manner is everything,— 
anima humana quodammodo est omnia.’ There 
is in it a certain infinity which does not destroy its 
unity. And it is this intellectuality, this ability to 
become all things, that defines spirit, mind as differ- 
ing from matter (Cfr. De Veritate, I, qu. 14, art. 1; 
De Causis, lib. 18). 

The dignity, the worth of a spiritual being, con- 
sists precisely in this. We are not only we; we do 
not only vegetate; we do not only come in super- 
ficial contact with our environment: by thought we 
embrace all things. Thought, intelligence,—this 1s 
the greatness of spirit, of mind, this the final aim of 
everything. The true purpose of nature is spirit; 
nature is an appendage of spirit; the body is there 
for the soul; material beings are of the nature of 
means; only intelligent, subsisting beings have the 
nature of an end. And the ultimate and supreme 


118 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


end, the beginning of all beings (which are created 
in so far as they are conceived) is the Being who 
is identical with His thought. 

With such a conception of ontological reality, how 
could St. Thomas have hesitated for a moment to 
be an intellectualist ? 


2. The Limits of Thomistic Intellectualism 


While St. Thomas admits the primacy of intel- 
ligence, he must not, however, be taken for an 
idolater of the human intellect and of rational knowl- 
edge. His intellectualism has its well-defined limits 
because for him, as Rousselot has shown, human 
intelligence is not intelligence as such (ut sic), that 
is to say, perfect intelligence, but rather the last in 
the series of intelligences. 

In the same chapter of the Contra Gentiles (IV, c. 
2) in which he explains the various grades of life, 
after singing the praises of intellect, St. Thomas 
adds: “Sed in intellectuali vita diversi gradus in- 
vemuntur,’—there are various grades in_ intel- 
lectual life. There is the human intellect, the angelic 
intellect, the divine intellect. The first, though able 
to know itself, takes the beginnings of its knowledge 
from what is external, and cannot understand with- 
out the phantasm, the imagination. ‘The second 
knows itself by means of itself, but its intellection is 
not its being. The third reaches perfection because 


LIMITS OF INTELLECTUALISM 119 


in God “non est aliud intelligere et aliud esse,’—in- 
tellect is identical with being. 

There are, therefore, profound and radical differ- 
ences which render the various kinds of intelligence 
irreducible, also as to the relations between the 
intelligent being and the intelligible object; for ex- 
ample, while in God mind posits and creates objects, 
in us the object is known, not created, by the act of 
thought. “Supremely ridiculous” (2 Metaph., lib. 
I) to the mind of St. Thomas was the opinion of 
Averroés that there was an equality between the 
human capacity for comprehension and the intel- 
ligible in itself (that man could know all that is 
knowable), because of that oneness of the active 
intellect in all men which was championed by the 
Arabian philosopher. 

Above human knowledge, then, there can be and 
there actually are,—according to St. Thomas,— 
other kinds of knowledge, more perfect. Our soul 
is the lowest in the series of intelligences and par- 
takes less of intellectual power than the others: 
““ntellectus animae humanae est infimus im ordine 
intellectuum’’ (Contra Gentiles, II, c. 16). 

The supreme ideal of intelligence, according to St. 
Thomas, would be intuition, regarded by the Schol- 
astics as that immediate act of the intellect which 
lays hold of the innermost truth of a thing with the 
shining clearness of perfect evidence. Knowing by 


120; INTELLECTUALISM OF Si. THOMAS 


way of intuitionn—or, as St. Thomas expresses 
himself, per intuitum simplicis veritatis,—consists 
in the intellectual grasp of being by an immediate 
knowledge, with an intimate penetration of the real, 
which is seized in itself, without any process of 
reasoning. 

We have an experience of such intuition in the 
knowledge of our.ego when we return, double on 
ourselves. It is not a complete intuition because we 
grasp neither the nature of our being nor its entire 
history ; however, it is an intuitive not a discursive 
knowledge of our existence, of the existence of our 
habits and our acts. By a most simple act of intu- 
ition the divine intellect knows all things in the most 
perfect manner. Therefore, it knows also the indi- 
vidual in himself, in his complex reality, origin, 
worth. We, on the contrary, as the last in the 
series of intelligences, have no such faculty here be- 
low because our soul, united as it is to the body, 
can not reach the idea except through the medium 
of sensations involving space and time. We know 
by abstracting our concepts from the things of sense, 
by prescinding from matter, space, and time, and 
later returning to apply the acquired universal idea 
to the reality given by sense. What intuition effects 
by a simple, immobile, comprehensive act, we must 
accomplish by manifold means: “quod non potest 
effict per unum, fiat aliqualiter per plura,’ said 


EINES OPV INTEC ERCTUALISM Dy i121 


Aristotle (2 Coel., lib. 18). And so what is one in 
itself,—say, Peter,—our knowledge represents by 
means of multiplicity (animal, rational, with such 
and such individual characteristics). While intu- 
ition grasps unity in itself, we cannot reach being 
except by bringing several ideas into connection, 
that is, componendo et dividendo. As the man, 
we read in Contra Gentiles (III, c. 97), who sees 
that one word alone does not fully express the idea 
in his mind, multiplies and varies his words so as to 
explain the idea in many terms, so our manner of 
knowing expresses what is one and simple by means 
of diversity and dissimilarity. 

The human intellect, then, attains to knowledge: 

(1) By way of the abstract concept, which does 
not express the whole of a being, but only one aspect 
of it. Therefore, the abstract concept does not de- 
form reality. As Mercier writes in his Critériologie 
Générale, “there are in this man differentiating notes 
not comprised in the abstract concept of man; but 
there is nothing in the concept of man that is not 
truly found in this man. The abstract concept is 
inadequate to the particular types it represents and 
of which it is affirmed. The very word abstraction 
points to an operation that does not embrace the 
whole, but detaches something from the whole. 
Hence it would be inexact to say that the abstract 
concept is not true to reality, but falsifies it. It 


122 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


represents things imcompletely, but it represents 
them truly.” Abstrahentium non est mendacium,— 
abstractions do not lie. 

(2) By means of laws, axioms, principles hav- 
ing an essential reference to the rational animal, in- 
asmuch as they are products of our own mode of 
knowing,—the lowest in the order of intelligence. 
Being exists prior to the laws, and these are but the 
suitable means for embracing it. Certainly, these 
laws are valid in the domain of cognition because, 
even in their universal character, they are laws of 
being; however, they do not lead to the knowledge 
of the whole being, but of one side of it only. 

(3) By means of reason (ratio) or the reason- 
ing process. According to St. Thomas, intellectus 
is to be well distinguished from ratio and intellective 
intuition must not be confused with ratiocinium, or 
discursive reasoning. They differ from each other 
as the perfect and the imperfect, as unity and the 
multiple, as eternity and time. It is the imperfection 
of our intellectual knowledge that is the cause of rea- 
soning. “Rationale est differentia animalis et Deo 
non convent nec angelis,’—the rational differenti- 
ates the animal (in man) and is not proper to God 
and the angels. “Defectus quidam intellectus est ra- 
tiocimum, ’—reasoning is a certain defect of the in- 
tellect. “Necessitas rationis est ex defectu intellec- 
tus, ’—reasoning is necessary because of a defect in 


LIMITS OF INTELLECTUALISM § 123 


the intellect. (Cfr. Summa Theologica, Ia Mae, qu. 
wayrarty'10,;ad' 2; qu. 40, art: 5. ad’3; 1, quis8iart: 
3; 1, qu. 79, art. 9; Contra Gentiles, I, c. 67 and 68; 
2, 1 Dist., 25, qu. 1, ad 4). After all, the certitude 
of reasoning depends in the last analysis on intel- 
lective intuition: “certitudo rationis est ex intellectw’”’ 
(Summa Theologica, Ia Ilae, qu. 49, art. 5, ad 2). 

(4) By means of science,—another indication of 
the weakness of our intelligence. If the latter were 
intuitive, there would be no need of scientia. “Est 
enim aliquid scientia melius, scilicet intellectus’— 
for there is something better than science, namely 
the intellect or intuition. 

For St. Thomas scientia is the specific perfection 
of ratio. In the absence of simple and intuitive 
intellection, it is the best form of speculation avail- 
able, though it partakes of the defects of ratio: 
“omnis scientia essentialiter non est intelligentia,’— 
every science essentially is not intelligence, intuition. 

In the mind of St. Thomas, science has a meaning 
different from that attached to it by the moderns. 
For him it is the investigation of the profound 
causes of being. It does not stop at phenomena, 
but goes down into the very depths, to the essences. 
For St. Thomas the scientist is one who knows es- 
sences. To speak of science is for him to speak 
of finality (teleology), precisely because nature and 
end are identical. By means of wide induction and 


124 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


repeated ascertainment we reach the definition of a 
thing, its essential characters, and come to know 
what a thing is. Then, by way of the deductive 
process, we rise from general principles to laws and 
scientific systematization. Science, therefore, con- 
siders the reason of being in things, their connection, 
their relations, but is not concerned with individuals. 
There is no science except of the universal. Science 
does not give us the whole universe, but a logical 
skeleton of it, endowed with absolute certainty and 
perennial validity. 

Besides scientia there were for St. Thomas the 
artes, such as agriculture and medicine. The arts 
and systematized industries are not pure specu- 
lation; though they can furnish the material for 
speculative study, they are not reducible to scientia, 
properly so-called, because they are not interested in 
quidditates, in what a thing is, but in the phenomena 
of sense,—with practical utilization, not knowledge, 
as their aim. 

St. Thomas admitted that there was wide room 
for hypotheses when, in studying matter, we pass 
from essence to phenomena with a view of explain- 
ing or foreseeing them. 

Abstract and universal concepts, principles, reason, 
science,—such are the means by which the human 
intellect, as differing from other higher intelligences, 
strives to reach the knowledge of being. 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 125 


Being is in itself what it is and has an ontological 
reality of its own, independently of the act of our 
thought or will. Our knowledge of being depends 
on our being, limited and imperfect as it is. It was 
also this distinction that determined the Thomistic 
theses concerning the knowledge man can have of 
the individual and of history. 


3. St. Thomas and the Knowledge of the Individual 
and of History 


Among the pressing demands of modern philoso- 
phy, all athirst for concrete knowledge, one fre- 
quently hears a ringing protest against the medieval 
period on the score that its speculation, teeming with 
the spirit of Greek intellectualism, had lost all taste 
and aptitude for the individual and for historical 
development. The serene and dazzling splendor of 
pure, fixed, and immutable abstractions diverted 
attention from the study alike of the world of sense, 
which was looked upon with disdain, and of develop- 
ment and history. 

It is said that the greatest exponent of medi- 
eval thought, St. Thomas, as Rousselot points out, 
not only repeats the old formula that “science has to 
do with the universal,’ but “asserts that knowledge 
of the particular is not a perfection of man’s specu- 
lative intellect.’ 

No doubt can exist on this point, says Rousselot. 


126 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


In the Summa Theologica (Ja, qu. 12, art. 8, ad 4) 
St. Thomas teaches that “the natural desire of the 
rational creature is to know everything that belongs 
to the perfection of the intellect, that is, the species 
and genera of things and their reasons. ... To 
know the rest, such as particular things and the 
thoughts and facts connected with them, does not 
belong to the perfection of the created intellect, nor 
does its natural desire go out to these things.” 
(Ctrialso Illa; qai2,'arti1)) Por Stal hon ae 
particular is excluded from the dominion of scientific 
certainty because it belongs to the uncertain and 
indeterminate field of sense and contingence. Even 
God Himself, whose Providence extends to every- 
thing, including particular beings, primarily looks 
upon the nature, the specific essence, as more noble 
than the flowing and passing reality. 

This, the objection continues, was treasonable to 
the new breath of life brought by Christianity. 
With the desire of blending Greek intellectualism 
with Christian doctrine, St. Thomas completely 
trampled under foot the teaching of Christ. 

In point of fact, Christianity was constantly pre- 
occupied with the individual. The value of every 
soul, ransomed by the blood of a God, plays an im- 
mense part in the Christian conception. The dogma 
that Providence extends its care to the tiniest in- 
sects, to the single birds, to every hair on our head, 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 127 


was another affirmation of the importance of the 
individual. Moreover, in Christian dogma and 
ethics the fall of Adam, the preparation for the 
Redeemer, the Redemption, the Communion of 
Saints, evince a concrete, dynamic vision of reality 
and a vivid and penetrating sense of history. 

Quite different was the abstractive and_ static 
vision of the universe. According to St. Thomas 
there is an essential order in the harmonious series 
of the species, per se. But among the individuals 
of the same species there is but an accidental suc- 
cession, holding no interest for the mind. The 
pre-eminence of the quidditative concept imposed on 
St. Thomas a static conception of the world. A 
subtle contemplator of the invisible and of essences, 
he lost interest in the world of sound and color 
and in the course of history,—matters which consti- 
tute the great preoccupation of modern mentality. 
Such, briefly, is the indictment brought against 
Thomism from many sides to-day. 


I do not wish to enter here upon a critical exami- 
nation of contemporary currents of philosophy, but 
shall confine myself to the exposition of the thought 
of St. Thomas concerning the idea of being. 

Aquinas never denied that the better kind of 
knowledge would be that of the concrete individual, 
not of the abstract universal. “Cognoscere singu- 


128 -INTELLECTUALISM. OF Sip fHorias 


laria pertinet ad perfectionem nostram,’—to know 
the singular is part of our perfection, he says in his 
Summa Theologica (la, qu. 14, art. 11). Intuitive 
knowledge, the intwitus that has a most complete and 
immediate perception of being and concentrate all the 
various determinations of the object in its indivisible 
unity, is, in his opinion, the better form of knowl- 
edge. And God, as he teaches in Contra Gentiles 
(I, c. 65), knows individual things in this manner. 
“Deus cognoscit res alias a se, non solum in univer- 
sali, sed etiam in singulart,’—God knows not only 
the essence in a universal manner, but the principles 
that constitute this determinate essence as it exists 
in the individual; hence He knows this matter, this 
form, these individualizing notes. 

Yet, we know but too well that our cognition is 
not as perfect as the divine: and the reason of this 
is to be found in our nature. 

In the view of St. Thomas, man, on the one hand, 
is a soul united to the body as that body’s form, 
on the other, material things have matter as their 
principle of individuation. Because of these condi- 
tions of fact, it is impossible for the intellect to 
apprehend the singular, the individual, directly: 
“impossibile est singulare ab intellectu apprehend 
directe.” 

Our knowledge begins with the senses, which give 
us the singular, the phantasm or imagination-image ; 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 129 


this is always individual. The intellect, in elabo- 
rating this sensory datum, abstracts, prescinds from 
individual matter and grasps the form, which is not 
the principle of individuation, but can repeat itself, 
be multiplied an indefinite number of times. For 
our intellect to reach the individual directly, it would 
have to know what exists in individual matter, in so 
far as it exists in such matter, that is, with its indi- 
vidualizing principles. However, as we have no 
direct intellectual knowledge of matter, we can di- 
rectly reach only the universal. 

As a result, the abstraction whereby we grasp 
being is not exhaustive of being itself; we do not 
lay hold of its singularity, which is undivided from 
real being and is its intrinsic constitutive determina- 
tion. 

And yet, it is the individual that we wish to reach 
because it is the true and only reality. How, then, 
do we go about it? After having taken hold of the 
particular by sense and imagination, and abstracted 
the form by prescinding from matter, we again turn 
our intellect to the imagination-image, the singular 
of sense, and apply to it the universal of intelligence. 
And so we say: Socrates (this individual given by 
sense) is a man (the universal idea), is white, and 
soon. Unable to apprehend the individual directly, 
we do so indirectly by uniting the abstract universal 
to a certain number of accident-perceptions ; thus we 


130 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


obtain a synthesis that gives us what is one with the 
co-operation of the manifold (quod non potest fiert 
per unum, fiat aliqualiter per plura). This synthesis, 
though it does not enable us to know the whole of 
Socrates, helps us to discern the particulars for 
practical purposes." Hence “we know the singular 
by a kind of reflection, inasmuch as the intellect, by 
apprehending its intelligible object, returns to the 
consideration of its act and of the intelligible species 
which is the beginning of its operation, and of the 
origin of that species; and so it comes to the con- 
sideration of the phantasms and of the singular 
which the phantasms represent.” In other words, 
“our intellect can know the singular indirectly, and 
as it were by a kind of reflection; because, even after 
abstracting the intelligible species, the intellect, in 
order to understand, needs to turn to the phantasms 
in which it understands the intelligible species. . . . 
Therefore it understands the universal itself directly 
through the intelligible species, and indirectly the 
singular represented by the phantasm. And thus 
it forms the proposition, Socrates is aman” (Summa 
Theologica, Ia, qu. 86, art. 1). 

Psychological observation shows this to be con- 

1QOn the question of our knowledge of the individual in the 
Thomistic conception see the various articles in the Summa 
Theologica, Ia, qu. 84, 85, 86; De Anima, 20, ad 1 in cont.; 


Comment. Sentent., IV, dist. 50, qu. 1, art. 3; 7 Metaph., lib. 14, 
art. 34; Contra Gentiles, I, c. 65. 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 13% 
sonant with what always takes place in our cognitive 
processes. With the senses I perceive a circle or 
several circles; my intellect conceives the idea of a 
circle and knows it directly; to have an intellective, 
and not merely a sensitive knowledge of this circle, 
1 must apply the universal idea of a circle to this 
particular figure. In like manner, I have an intel- 
lective knowledge of this person, in so far as I know 
that this individual, perceived by my senses, is a 
man, white, musical, tall, wise, etc. It is to be noted 
that in such knowledge the single ideas and their 
synthesis are such as can readily be repeated of 
other persons, real or possible: “Oportet, st singu- 
lare definitur, in eius definitione pont aliqua nomina 
quae multis conveniunt,’—in the definition of the 
singular it is necessary to use some terms which are 
applicable to many (7 Metaph., lib. 14). We are 
always moving within an indirect knowledge that 
never grasps singularity, but represents the individ- 
ual in a manner that is incomplete, though practically 
useful. 

To conclude: St. Thomas does not deny that our 
intellect in its present state knows individual beings. 
On the contrary, he expressly teaches that we arrive 
at a knowledge of the individual, not indeed by a 
direct, but by an indirect cognition. And as to the 
senses, he attributes to them the apprehension of 
the individual, and this particular apprehension by 


132 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


the sensitive faculty serves him later to explain the 
action of the practical intellect, which, acting other- 
wise than the speculative intellect, does not limit 
itself to the contemplation of truth, but what it 
apprehends it directs to action. It is the union of 
sense and intellect, corresponding to our nature as 
matter informed by mind, that gives rise to this our 
special kind of indirect knowledge of the individual. 

As St. Thomas himself brings out, it is not re- 
pugnant for the individual to be intellectually known 
in so far as it is individual, but in so far as it is 
material, because intellectually we know nothing ex- 
cept in an immaterial manner (immaterialiter) by 
prescinding from matter and the individualizing 
notes. Hence the objection that “our intellect 
understands itself, and yet there is question of some- 
thing individual,” is answered by Aquinas thus: 
“St sit aliquid singulare et immateriale, sicut est 
intellectus, hoc non repugnat intelligi,’—the singu- 
lar that is at the same time immaterial can be known: 
we have an intuitive and individual knowledge of 
the acts of our ego because our soul is spiritual. 

Direct sense knowledge of the individual, di- 
rect intellective knowledge of the universal, intuitive 
and individual intellective knowledge of our ego,— 
such briefly, are the theses of St. Thomas in this 
matter. 

After what has been said it is clear how baseless 


KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY 133 


is the accusation that St. Thomas undervalues the 
individual. He would welcome the ability of reach- 
ing it intuitively, concretely, directly, as God reaches 
it; and were he living to-day, he would envy those 
who claim to have such knowledge. He did but 
establish that, in the present condition of things, our 
intellect has not got this ability, and he believed that 
his opponents had no more knowledge of individual 
beings than he. 

The same considerations hold good as to history 
and the knowledge of the process of becoming. 

The importance of this process is not overlooked 
by St. Thomas. On the contrary, in his Physics he 
makes his own the forceful expression of Aristotle: 
“Ignorato motu, ignoratur natura,’—if movement 
is ignored, nature is ignored. But his great princi- 
ple is that “there is nothing to hinder an unchange- 
able knowledge of changeable things.” 

God, for example, because not subject to time and 
embracing with His Being the past, present, and 
future,—all history,—knows immutably whatever 
becomes because He sees it in what Boéthius calls 
the “tota simul et perfecta possessio,’—the perfect 
possession that is whole all at once. 

We, too, despite the imperfection of our intellect, 
can catch the flow of beings with our abstract con- 
cepts because in the concrete, individual, and change- 
able determinations of reality there are some common 


134 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


reasons, some intelligible forms, some _ essential 
notions which are and remain substantially un- 
changeable, and into which philosophic abstraction 
resolves the concrete datum. It is quite true that 
there are beings in the world that are perennially 
undergoing change. But is not the concept of 
“change” which I ascertain in all changing things 
the same? May it not be truly applied to all 
changes,—past, present, and future, real and pos- 
sible? Again, in every man I find different indi- 
vidual notes and observe an unceasing development, 
a perpetual change. But does this do away with the 
fixed and unchangeable truth that all these human 
persons, whether taken one by one, or each in him- 
self during the various moments of their fient 
(becoming), have an identical reason of being, the 
same human nature in virtue of which they are men 
and not irrational animals? Does the fact that 
every free act is different and develops successively, 
contradict the other fact that the notion of a free 
act, as inferred from real and changeable actions, is 
fixed and immutable? 

Of course, by such an abstractive process I do not 
succeed in getting history, change, phenomenal being, 
in all its rich complexity: here, too, I have recourse 
to the intuition of my Ego and of my soul, to the 
help of the senses, to judgment, and so on. Here 
too, “quod non potest fiert per unum, fiat aliqualiter 


KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY 135 


per plura.” Our inability to know reality perfectly 
destroys none of its characteristic notes. 

Therefore, two points of view must be carefully 
distinguished in the teaching of St. Thomas: the 
ontological and the logical, the object known and the 
manner of knowing it, the cognitum and the modus 
cognoscendi, 

As to being in itself, 2. e., the ontological reality, 
St. Thomas is far from rejecting the teachings of 
Christianity about person, the human individual, 
Divine Providence, history, etc. The spirit of Chris- 
tianity, or, to use Laberthonniére’s phrase, le réalisme 
chrétien,—Christian realism,—is by no means op- 
posed to Greek and Thomistic intellectualism in what 
has reference to being, to the object of knowledge. 
In the ontological problem a follower of Aristotle 
is not called upon to tread under foot the rights of 
individuality, or the fact of change, or the historic 
sense. Quite the contrary. The only difference, if 
any, between him and a defender of the theory that 
all is movement (“universal mobilism’’), is this: in 
the various categories of changeable being Thomistic 
Aristotelianism recognizes a reason of being, an 
essential principle, which remains substantially iden- 
tical throughout all accidental changes. But in this 
there is nothing repugnant to the Christian spirit or 
to the exigencies of history. If by a static view of 
the universe is meant a philosophy that discovers 


136 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


common aspects in the flow of things, then it is 
clear that such staticism neither rejects the develop- 
ment of things nor contravenes Christianity. This 
explains how St. Thomas could uphold his theses 
concerning Divine Providence as directing indi- 
viduals and history. “Providentiae ordinem,’ we 
read in De Veritate (5, 4), “in singularibus ponimus 
etiam im quantum singularia sunt,’—the order of 
Providence holds good in regard to individual beings 
also in so far as they are individual. 

In the logical order this principle prevails: “cog- 
mtum est im cognoscente ad modum cognoscentis, 
—the thing known is in the knower according to the 
mode of the knower,’—~. e., the manner of the 
knower’s being determines the manner of his know- 
ing. 

God, the perfect Being, has a perfect knowledge 
extending to all individuals, to their being and be- 
coming. The divine cognition embraces beings and 
their history in all their immense richness down to 
their inmost depths, and their significance in the 
process of development, characteristic alike of the 
single individuals and of their totality. And as the 
actions and manifestations of the single beings are 
a fruit that grows on the tree of their own nature, 
as it exists in the concrete, God, concludes St. 
Thomas, knows the single individuals through their 


BEING AND KNOWLEDGE OF BEING 137 


essence, their species ; nor is any other procedure con- 
ceivable. 

Man, because his nature consists of a soul united 
as form to a body, has an imperfect knowledge, 
which, while not false, is far from being complete. 
His abstractive intellectual cognition, conjoined with 
the sense-knowledge of the particular, seeks to 
grasp and understand the individual and _ history 
without ever exhausting the object of its study. 
And the “naturale desiderium”’ of human intelli- 
gence, the desire, that is, which we have in so far 
as we are endowed with our actual nature, cannot 
be different. When we yearn to know the individ- 
ual and history directly and intuitively, we strain 
for a knowledge that surpasses our ability. This 
yearning is holy, if you will, but it is not natu- 
ral, not in keeping with what lies in our nature’s 
power. 


4, Being and the Knowledge of Being 


From all that has been said, the one idea inspiring 
Thomistic intellectualism and its limits now stands 
out in all its limpid clearness. 

Whoever, like St. Thomas, conceives being as an 
ontological reality not created by an act of thought 
or will, but, on the contrary, conceives the act of 
thought and will as implying and presupposing the 


138 INTELLECTUALISM OF ST. THOMAS 


being of him who thinks and wills, cannot confuse 
these two questions: 

(a) the question of being; 

(b) the question of the knowledge of being. 

Such a distinction would be meaningless in a 
philosophy which, like the contemporary metaphysics 
of mind, denies the being that is not a creation of 
thought and admits thought itself purely as an act. 
But in the system of St. Thomas this distinction 
was imperative; and, given this point of departure, 
the inexorable consequences had of necessity to fol- 
low. 

The intellectualism of St. Thomas consists in 
viewing intelligence as the highest form of being, 
whether in God, in whom being is identical with 
understanding; or in created reality, where there is 
an ascent from being to imtelligence; or in man, 
whose being and nature depend on his own intelli- 
gence, which tends to the possession, 7. e., the knowl- 
edge, of Being. 

The limits of Thomistic intellectualism arise from 
the fact that, while being is always individual and 
(excepting the perfect Being) has a history, our 
knowledge of being, because incomplete, is marked 
by the characteristics we have described. 

Here, too, the whole question concerns being and 
the knowledge of being. And all who seek to fathom 
the intellectualism of St. Thomas without losing 


BEING AND KNOWLEDGE OF BEING 139 


themselves in the labyrinth of theories of knowledge, 
should never let go of the Leztfaden that alone 
offers guidance and safety, namely, the leading-line 
of being. 


CTIAPE TERA it 


BEING IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 
(FAITH AND REASON ) 


WuHeEn one follows the anxious researches made 
from the fourth to the thirteenth century into the 
relations between philosophy and theology, faith and 
reason, scientific and dogmatic truths, the natural 
and the supernatural, one is astonished alike at the 
efforts put forth by the human mind and at the un- 
certainty of the solutions reached. 

What relations exist between philosophic thought 
and the dogmatic teaching of the Church? This 
fundamental question took on different aspects with 
different thinkers, branching out into a thousand 
other debatable points. Some asked themselves 
whether it was permissible to apply the results of 
metaphysical speculation to theology? While opin- 
ions differed on this preliminary question, many 
illustrious theologians maintained that even the most 
sublime mysteries, such as that of the Most Holy 
Trinity, could be demonstrated by reason alone. 
Some claimed the ability to prove only the existence 

140 


FAITH AND REASON 141 


of this mystery (an sit), while others were confi- 
dent of being able to give the most exhaustive ex- 
planation of it, and to answer the question quomodo 
sit, how it is. Some, again, denied to the human 
mind, endowed with merely natural resources, the 
power of reaching the inaccessible regions of dogma; 
others, finally, as against the hardihood of the the- 
ological rationalism of the day, outlined a theory of 
analogy, inasmuch as created things cannot offer a 
perfect term of comparison for the Creator. Discus- 
sion followed hard upon discussion. The famous 
question whether the same truth can be simultane- 
ously known and believed by the same individual,— 
“utrum idem possit esse scitum et creditum,’— 
found two solutions. Some held that there was 
nothing to hinder us from contemplating one and 
the same truth at once with the eye of rational 
evidence and with that of faith. Others found 
this to be a flat contradiction. And this controversy 
brought keen intellects face to face with doubts as 
to the very possibility of a rationabile obsequium, 
—a reasonable submission to faith. If faith was 
demonstrable and demonstrated, they said, one had 
of course to believe; but in that case the act of 
faith lost all freedom of assent, and therefore all 
merit. If on the contrary, no solid and convincing 
proofs were available, the act of faith did indeed 
remain free and meritorious, but at the same time 


142)" DE RY DA BOLOGY (OP vs lary 


signalized an abdication of the rights of rational 
thought. 

During the whole of this age-long discussion, 
the two orders—the natural and the supernatural, 
the rational and the superrational—were frequently 
confused, with disastrous consequences. Men did 
not know how to trace clear and precise boundary- 
lines between metaphysics and dogma, between phil- 
osophy and theology. It often happened that the 
theologian encroached on the territory of the phil- 
osopher, and vice versa. And if the theologian 
dared to deny the worth of reason, the philosopher 
pretended to prove revealed, superrational truths 
by intrinsic arguments. 

The first one to bring together all that was true 
in the assertions of his predecessors and to blend it 
into one harmonious conception by means of his 
principle of being, was St. Thomas. He furnished 
a definitive solution of the problem with the valuable 
aid and encouragement of his teacher Albert the 
Great. As Th. Heitz has clearly shown, in the 
work cited above, Aquinas took up the materials 
elaborated and prepared by others under many diffi- 
culties. He knew how to utilize these materials for 
the doctrinal construction of his Summae, where 
philosophy and theology, metaphysics and dogma, 
while remaining formally distinct, concur in one 
vast synthesis. Henceforth his doctrine on the 


FAITH AND REASON 143 


relation between faith and reason became classic 
and official in Catholic teaching. 


T 


The main currents that preceded the Thomistic 
synthesis on this point were three: 

(a) The first was unable to solve the problem of 
the relation between metaphysics and dogma owing 
to an initial error that undid and rendered well nigh 
impossible every attempt at a solution. I refer to 
the Augustinian theory of the divine illumination 
of our minds. If the ray of faith and that of 
reason are nothing but one direct illumination pro- 
ceeding from the primal Light, then the edifice of 
philosophy and that of theology are irradiated in an 
almost equal manner. ‘There will be a quantitative 
difference. William of Auvergne said that phil- 
osophy “is not a perfect illumination of souls, but 
may be compared to a feeble light,”’ the while faith 
is a brilliant luminary. At times, as in the case of 
Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, we find rational 
knowledge so conditioned by the illumination that 
one could not say whether that knowledge is super- 
natural, or whether revelation is being lowered to 
the level of reason. 

The Augustinian theory of knowledge perforce 


144 THE THEOLOGY/OF Si THOMAS 


weakened the distinction between the domain of 
revelation and that of reason, reducing it to a ques- 
tion of more or less, without marking any precise 
limits. This becomes evident when one reads the 
writings of Hugh of St. Victor. In likeness to 
reason, “divine grace itself is an illumination; the 
very gifts [of the Holy Ghost] are lights of the 
grace which illumines those who partake of it; and 
every grace comes down from one sole source, and 
every illumination from one only light, and the rays 
are many, but the light is one.” Other Augustinian 
writers call all natural knowledge a revelation from 
God, the first truth in the logical order. These 
assertions can, of course, be given a mild interpre- 
tation, inasmuch as reason,—the lumen rationis,— 
can justify the expression “natural revelation,” to 
be well distinguished from supernatural revelation; 
but such phrases created confusion and obscurity. 
It would be interesting to study in the writings of 
St. Bonaventure how the essential role which he 
assigned to subjective illumination had the effect of 
making him waver when tracing the practical limits 
between reason and faith, philosophy and theology, 
even though his keen mind had noticed the formal 
principle of the distinction. 

The problem to be solved was one of relations. 
Hence it implied the necessity of first making clear 


FAITH AND REASON 145 


the implications of the two terms whose relations 
were to be investigated. It would become possible 
to conceive the harmony of reason and faith as soon 
as one knew precisely what was the field of reason 
and what the domain of faith. Only after know- 
ing how faith and reason differ, could one say how 
they become united. Instead, the Augustinian 
school, though defending with might and main the 
importance of a union between them, overlooked 
the moment of distinction. 

(b) Another tendency too exclusively stressed 
the rights of faith, forgetting that in a question of 
relations between two different fields, neither of 
them should be undervalued or neglected. 

When, for example, I open the works of St. Peter 
Damian,—his De Sancta Simplicitate Scientiae In- 
flantt Anteponenda (that holy simplicity is to be pre- 
ferred to the science that puffs up), and his De 
Monachis qui Grammaticam Discere Gestiunt (on 
monks who would fain learn grammar),—I meet 
with an exaggerated aversion to philosophy, which 
is looked upon as a wisdom that “comes not from on 
high, but is earthly, animal, diabolical.” And in one 
of his smaller works, Plato and Pythagoras, Euclid 
and Aristotle are ridiculed with a vengeance: quae- 
vant peripatetici,’ he says, “latentem in profundo 
puteo veritatem,—let the Aristotelians look for truth 


i146. THE THEOLOGY OF ST THOMAS 


int.a, deep well...) .,° like the rustic insthesston: 
who looked for the moon down there, while it was 
shining in high heaven. 

Peter Damian, the valiant man of action, was not 
alone. More than two centuries later William of 
Auxerre feared to apply reasoning of the natural 
order to theology, just as William of Champeaux, 
famous for his part in the conflict about universals, 
had had a holy horror of introducing dialectic pro- 
cesses into theological discussions ; when face to face 
with knotty questions and torturing difficulties, he 
preferred to answer, simply: “This must be left 
to the judgment of God.” 

Among the leading representatives of this ten- 
dency are St. Bernard, Lanfranc, and, in a certain 
sense, St. Anselm of Canterbury, notwithstanding 
his great merit of having prepared the full flowering 
of Scholasticism. To be sure, St. Anselm cannot 
be charged with exaggerations like those mentioned ; 
however, though applying reason to the study of 
faith, he does not leave the battle-ground delimited 
by his well-known programme: “Credo, ut tmtel- 
ligam.” 

To interpret this principle correctly, it must be 
remembered that for the discussion of theological 
problems in general and for the study of mysteries 
in particular, St. Anselm required the dispositions 
of a good will joined to staid habits and a Christian 


FAITH AND REASON 147 


life. Only after having come to love the faith with 
a pure heart, can one proceed to study it; only after 
the credere can one pass on to the intelligere. But 
“here,” notes Heitz, “intelligere does not mean the 
absolute evidence of the philosopher, but rather the 
faith of the believer, which, though simple and in- 
genuous on the threshold of scientific research, be- 
comes enriched by theological conclusions as by 
illuminations and supplementary revelations,—if 
the expression is permissible,—come down from on 
high by means of meditation on the divine mys- 
teries.” The intelligere of St. Anselm, then, is what 
we call theology,—the elaborate and systematic 
study of dogma,—not reason, whose relations to 
faith remained to be examined. Such an exami- 
nation was not made by him; and it is precisely 
because he failed to draw a clear-cut distinction be- 
tween the two orders that some of the theories of 
St. Anselm sin by excess or by defect. 

Finally, while this second current had the merit 
of throwing light on the subject of faith, and in 
explaining the matter came to call on reason for 
an illustration of the datum of revelation, it did not 
duly reckon with the rdle and the demands of rational 
knowledge. To use a simile employed by St. An- 
selm himself, these men were happy in the faith 
that made them like unto eagles, with their gaze 
fixed on the midday sun, but too neglectful of the 


148 “THE THEOLOGY Ob IST tHOMAS 


bats of dialectics, incapable of discussion in the light 
of day, and then, like Abélard, straying in the dark- 
ness of a thousand errors. 

(c) This feeble light of reason was given an 
enthusiastic and almost exclusive preference by 
another school, which had Averroés for its founder 
and Siger of Brabant for its foremost representative. 

Averroes made his obeisance to the Koran— 
but with a proviso: when there was a question of a 
demonstrated truth contradicting the Koran, it was 
imperative to interpret the latter conformably to 
philosophy, though the people were to hold to the 
literal sense. Similarly, Siger of Brabant, though 
protesting his respect for the teaching of faith, de- 
fended divers theses contradicting the fundamental 
truths of Christianity, and resorted to the subter- 
fuge of the double-truth theory. 

That religion is of supernatural origin, or that 
the individual soul is spiritual and immortal was, 
for the Averroists, false in philosophy, because of 
the principle of circular succession, the eternal repe- 
tition of events, and the single active intellect 
(God) existing in all things; but it was true in the- 
ology and for faith. This rendered an internal 
cleavage of the mind inevitable: the mind was called 
upon to welcome as divinely imposed revelation doc- 
trines that were said to be in sharpest contrast with 
the results of scientific research; under the pretext 


FAITH AND REASON 149 


of invariably submitting even to a faith contrary to 
reason, these men sinned in favor of the latter by 
that exclusiveness which those of the second current 
practiced in favor of revealed truth. 


Such were the three theories devised in the course 
of centuries. It cannot be denied that each one con- 
tained a considerable portion of truth. The Augus- 
tinians were quite right in upholding the harmony 
between faith and knowledge, between the two rays 
of the one sun. The Anselmians did not choose a 
mistaken position when they aligned themselves as 
the champions of dogma, theology, and the faith. 
The Averroists were not wholly in the wrong in vin- 
dicating the worth of human reason and demanding 
for it the highest respect. 

None of the three theories, however, gave expres- 
sion to the full truth. The first did not specify in 
what precisely consists the distinction between faith 
and reason, philosophy and theology. The others 
distinguished too much and sacrificed faith in favor 
of reason or reason for the benefit of faith. 

Then came St. Thomas, with the way prepared 
for him by Albert the Great. In the midst of ten- 
dencies so disparate, he furnished a solution for 
every difficulty, respected every legitimate demand 
of reason and faith, and so arrived at the definitive 
doctrine. By tracing the line of demarcation be- 


130 THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 


tween metaphysics and dogma, he pointed to the 
unity in distinction, with that limpid clearness which 
is the hall-mark of truth. 


IT 


To reach a solution of the problem Thomas 
Aquinas had no thought whatsoever of dethroning 
reason or debasing metaphysics. The latter was al- 
ways regarded by him as the most estimable of all 
human sciences, and the least of its conquests had 
more value in his eyes than the greatest certainty in 
other fields. Besides, it was metaphysics and nat- 
ural theology (not to be confused with the theology 
of revealed truth), that mounted up to God, whether 
from contingent beings to the Being by essence, or 
by the synthetic, deductive method,—by way of ne- 
gation, excluding every imperfection from God; by 
way of affirmation, attributing to God every essential 
perfection (simpliciter simplex) found in the things 
that surround us, by way of transcendence or emi- 
nence, which raises the perfections attributed to God 
to an infinite degree. 

The respect, therefore, that is due to reason was 
not even remotely a matter for discussion; immedi- 
ate or mediate evidence, compelling assent and gen- 
erating in us intrinsic certitude of a truth, consti- 
tuted the light of this domain. 


FAITH AND REASON 151 


St. Thomas observed, however, that we cannot al- 
ways exult in the inward joy of such rational evi- 
dence concerning truth. There are judgments that 
leave us in perplexity and make us suspend our as- 
sent by doubt. ‘There are likewise judgments to 
which we adhere though we are not quite sure, and 
which, therefore, do not possess true certainty, but 
belong to the field of opinion. Finally, there are 
cases where the will determines intelligence to ad- 
here to a proposition, not because the latter is evi- 
dent, but because it is attested as true by testimonies 
worthy of respect. In such cases we have faith. 

Let no one suppose that faith is necessary only 
for divine things. Quite otherwise. Faith admits 
as certain a fact or a doctrine when the intellect does 
not see their evidence, but is influenced by some other 
motive to adhere to them. Thus if an explorer as- 
sures me that in the heart of Africa there is a city 
hitherto unknown, I make an act of faith by believ- 
ing his words, provided it is evident to me from 
other sources that he is a serious and trustworthy 
man. Moreover, adds St. Thomas, social life is 
made possible to a great extent by this very fact of 
faith, as St. Augustine had previously declared in 
his De Utilitate Credendi. Education, the school, 
pedagogy are founded on the principle of Aristotle: 
“oportet addiscentem credere,’—the learner must 
take things on faith. In the field of natural truths, 


152 LHE. THEOLOGY *Ol sila tions 


too, the ignorant must believe the learned, be he 
scientist or metaphysician. And every act of faith 
means an act of homage to him whom one believes: 
not the evidence of what he says, but submission to 
his authority, is the formal principle of human faith. 

The same holds true of divine faith. The truth 
of faith is not scientific truth; the first is admitted 
because of the authority of God, the second, because 
of the intrinsic connection grasped by intuition or 
reached through demonstration. In divine faith,— 
as the Summa Theologica teaches in phrases that 
were later incorporated, with slight changes, into a 
solemn definition of the Vatican Council,—one be- 
lieves, “non propter rationem humanam, sed propter 
auctoritatem divinam,’—not on account of human 
reason, but on account of divine authority. And it 
cannot be admitted that the same truth may be sim- 
ultaneously known and believed; that is, considered 
from the same point of view, it cannot be the object 
of faith and of knowledge for one and the same 
mind: “de eodem secundum idem non potest esse 
simul in uno homine scientia nec cum opinione nec 
cum fide, alia et alia tamen ratione.”’ 


To give us a clear idea of what faith is, St. 
Thomas distinguishes its material object, its formal 
reason, and its subject. 

1, The material object of faith,—that which is 


FAITH AND REASON 153 


believed,—is not the irrational, but the super- 
rational, made manifest to us by revelation. This 
comprises two classes of truths: some which con- 
cern God and surpass the faculties of human reason; 
others which reason, too, could reach. ‘That there 
are three Persons and one Nature in God is an ex- 
ample of the first class; the existence of a First 
Cause is an example of the second. 

That there is a domain of divine reality above the 
capacity of our mind appears quite evident. For we 
rise to the knowledge of God from the things of 
sense, and these enable us to know that God exists,— 
quia est, not what His substance is,—quid sit. Be- 
sides, there is a gradation also in intelligences; the 
angelic intellect is more powerful than ours, and the 
divine more than that of the Angels. Hence, as it 
would be silly for a tyro to brand as false the teach- 
ings of a philosopher because he cannot understand 
them, so it would be a much greater folly if a man re- 
fused to accept revealed truths because he cannot 
fathom them with his reason. Besides, are we not 
ignorant even of many properties of material things? 
How much greater must be the insufficiency of our 
reason in regard to the supremely excellent sub- 
stance of God! (Contra Gentiles, I, cap. 3; Summa 
Theologica, Ia, qu. 1). 

It was expedient that there should be a Revelation 
alike of divine truths that surpass reason and of 


m4 THE THEOLOGY ORS I aprG aie 


those which it can discover. If these latter had not 
been revealed to us, three disadvantages would have 
resulted: first, but few would come to know them 
because inferior talents, the cares of practical life, or 
indolence would debar many from studying them; 
secondly, even those who attained to a knowledge 
of these truths would do so only with much time and 
effort; finally, many would remain in doubt because 
human speculation is frequently commingled with 
error. For all these reasons it was befitting that 
God in his mercy should make provision by revela- 
tion also for truths which do not exceed the power 
of reason, as otherwise only a few could acquire 
them, and that only after a long time and with the 
admixture of some errors. 

Still more persuasive are the arguments for the 
truths that exceed our mental powers. It was right 
that God should reveal them: first, because man had 
been raised to the supernatural order and must tend 
to God and to a possession of God that exceeds the 
estate of our minds; therefore, the revelation of this 
end was necessary, otherwise its desire and its at- 
tainment alike would have been impossible; secondly, 
by means of revelation we have a more complete and 
truer knowledge of God; thirdly, we become aware 
of our littleness and feel the great limitations of our 
mental endowments; finally, we are urged on to 


FAITH AND REASON 15s 


things immortal and divine (Contra Gentiles, I, cap. 
4 et 5; Summa Theologica, Ia, qu. 1). 

2. The formal motive of faith, as we have stated, 
is not the evidence of the truth proposed, but the 
authority of God, who is the first truth. Faith does 
not consist solely in admitting a thing as true; other- 
wise the devil, too, who admits the Divine Trinity, 
would be making an act of faith and, therefore, an 
act of virtue. It consists in giving assent to a truth 
m so far as it 1s revealed by God. The act of faith, 
then, is an act of homage to the Deity, and it can be 
repeated indefinitely. It is a virtue, and it 1s free be- 
cause it depends on the will; it is elicited by the intel- 
lect, but it is enjoined by an act of free-will. 

3. Finally, the subject of faith are not the bare 
natural faculties. These are elevated and aided by 
supernatural grace. Hence the formula proposed by 
St. Thomas as a summary of the act of faith: 
credere Deum,—to believe God and His Revelation, 
—this is the material object of Faith; credere Deo,— 
to believe on the authority of God’s word,—this is 
the formal object; credere in. Deum,—to direct our 
belief to God,—this is the tendency of the intellect 
moved by the will towards the last end. 

But, it may be urged, does this domain of the 
super-rational really exist? 

It does, answers St. Thomas. It is reasonable 


156° THE THEOLOGY OFS TefiloM As 


and obligatory to believe. Our assent to revealed 
dogma is far from being an act of levity. Though 
unable to demonstrate the intrinsic truth of a dogma 
(otherwise we should no longer have faith, but sci- 
ence), we nevertheless have an abundance of argu- 
ments to prove the fact of revelation and to know its 
content. These arguments form the motives of 
credibility, leading to the conclusion that ours is 
a rationabile obsequium—a reasonable submission. 
Thus the act of faith is, on the one hand, reason- 
able and obligatory, on the other, free and meritori- 
ous. The motives of credibility do not give us a 
scientific knowledge of the dogmas, but they do give 
us the certainty that God has revealed these dogmas. 
Thereupon the will, under the gentle movement of 
grace, urges the intellect to assent,—not, however, 
according to the greater or less clearness of the 
proofs, but solely in submission to and by reason of 
the authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be 
deceived. 

Thus far we have described the act of faith in its 
essential difference from the processes of reason. 

But the human mind does not rest satisfied with 
merely cataloguing the teachings of the faith. It 
arranges them into a system, elaborates and develops 
them, and draws from them further conclusions as 
from first and fundamental principles. In this man- 
ner faith forms the basis of theology, this true sci- 


FAITH AND REASON 157 


ence—more speculative than practical—which has its 
sources in revealed dogmas. 

In relation to theology, philosophy has an ancil- 
lary function. Philosophy, namely, est ancilla the- 
ologiae in the following sense: first, in so far as it 
demonstrates the preambles of faith, such as the ex- 
istence of God and the fact of revelation; secondly, 
in so far as by apt analogies and an accurate elabo- 
ration it explains faith, illustrates it, and presents its 
doctrines in a systematic form; thirdly, it solves the 
objections of adversaries by pointing out their fals- 
ity or weakness, by dispelling the alleged contradic- 
tions in dogma and mystery, by showing, that 1s, 
that the super-rational is not the irrational. Phil- 
osophy, then, is the way to faith, the means for theo- 
logical construction, the powerful defense of faith 
itself. 

In thus conceiving the relations between theology 
and metaphysics, the medieval theologian combined 
the two constructive methods which, in their develop- 
ment in the course of centuries, were destined to give 
rise to positive theology and to speculative theology: 
that is to say, the method of authority, based on 
Sacred Scripture, which deductively demonstrates 
that this or that truth is revealed; and the dialectic 
method that simplifies and develops the truths them- 
selves. 

It was, then, not a disdain for philosophical stud- 


is8 THE THEOLOGY OPV ST THON ys 


ies that prompted St. Thomas to regard them as 
“quasi famulantes,’ as servants of the theological 
sciences, but solely his lucid vision of the co-ordina- 
tion between the activity of reason and the realm of 
faith. One and the other were respected by him; 
but their union was conceived as possible and fertile 
in results. 


INI 


In this problem, too, the Thomistic synthesis 
should be analyzed in the light of the idea of being, 
which serves to illuminate the position of the Angelic 
Doctor also as against the attacks of the natural- 
ism of to-day. Pierre Rousselot understood this 
when in his L’Intellectualisme de Saint-Thomas he 
observed that the master thought which makes for 
unity everywhere and combines philosophy and the- 
ology in an indissoluble synthesis, may be formu- 
lated as follows: “Intelligence is essentially the 
sense of the real, of being; but it is a sense 
of the real only because it is a sense of the 
divine.”—‘‘In Scholasticism,” he adds, “there is one 
paramount question,—one might almost say, one sin- 
gle question,—namely, that of the acquisition of be- 
ing. Only by facing the medieval thinkers from 


FAITH AND REASON 159 


this side can we come to understand the quality of 
their thought.” 


It will be well to make some observations on the 
relations between metaphysics and theology, as ex- 
plained by St. Thomas in his commentary on Boe- 
thius’ treatise De Trinitate and in his Summa The- 
ologica. 

1. According to the Angelic Doctor, reason clears 
the way for faith. The ways of faith and the ways 
of reason, though different, are united. Their dis- 
tinction, their diversity, does not do away with their 
union. How is this to be understood? 

For St. Thomas the intellect is the faculty by 
which we apprehend being,—‘“captatrice de l’étre,” 
as the French put it, and as we have explained at 
some length. 

However, in the present state of things, our in- 
tellect grasps being only through the medium of ab- 
stract concepts, which give us but one side, not the 
whole of reality. Moreover, as a result of the union 
of soul and body, the proper object of the human in- 
tellect are the things of sense, in which it seeks and 
finds the guidditas by abstracting from the individ- 
ualizing notes. ‘There is for us no special science 
of immaterial beings; these elude our immediate in- 
tuition and we can apprehend their existence only 


160°) THE THEOLOGY: O8 33 et HO Nis 


through their effects. Athirst though we are for re- 
ality, for being, we can reach but a small portion of 
it. The greater part escapes us, and would be de- 
nied to us for ever if we had only the abstractive in- 
tellect as instrument of cognition. 

Revelation throws open a region of being which 
reason cannot explore. Faith projects a ray of light 
into a domain which the feeble sight of human intel- 
ligence could never discern, may, not even suspect. 
Considering the lack of intrinsic evidence for the 
truths proposed to the believer, faith seemingly 
thrusts us out into the night; but in reality it plunges 
us into a fruitful darkness, where we may contem- 
plate the starry heavens which we otherwise could 
not see at all. 

Philosophy and dogma alike, metaphysics as well 
as theology, are at one with each other in this: they 
are the means for knowing, for grasping being. In 
the first case we lay hold of it by reason, in the sec- 
ond by faith. One process of acquisition does not 
exclude the other. In his commentary on Boéthius’s 
De Trinitate (qu. 2, art. 3) St. Thomas well says: 
“Lumen fidet, quod nobis gratis infunditur, non de- 
struit lumen naturalis cognitionis nobis naturaliter in- 
ditum,’—the light of faith, infused as a gift of 
grace, does not destroy the light of natural knowl- 
edge implanted in us by nature. The supernatural 
is not the annihilation, but the sublimation, the ele- 


FAITH AND REASON 161 


vation of the natural. Grace perfects and presup- 
poses nature. The light of faith does not do away 
with, but acts as a complement to, the light of na- 
tural knowledge. 

Therefore, when confronted with the double-truth 
theory, the meek St. Thomas was roused to a holy 
anger. Writing his treatise De Unitate Intellectus 
contra Averroistas against the Quaestiones de Anima 
Intellectiva of Siger of Brabant, he more than ever 
made clear his unshakable conviction as to the worth 
of intelligence and reason, whose laws are the laws 
of being, and for this reason cannot conflict with the 
manifestations and supernatural revelattons of Be- 
ing furnished us by faith. 

There will come an hour for the human intellect 
when both reasoning and faith will be as “straw for 
the burning’; it is that hour when it will attain to 
the vision of God, when in the bliss of contemplating 
Being as He is in Himself, the intellect will have 
reached the highest peak toward which, like alpinists, 
we are laboriously climbing to-day. 

Abstractive intellect, faith, beatific vision are three 
steps that lead us gradually to the possession of be- 
ing. Being is the one and only final object of our 
intellectual efforts. The diversity of the ways,— 
each one of which is a continuation of the other,— 
does not destroy the identity of the longed for goal, 
1. €., Being. 


162) THE THROLOGYVORTS Tw iiOsiaS 


2. Reason elaborates the material of faith and 
constructs the theological system. This truth was 
not only asserted, but carried into practice by St. 
Thomas. The immortal proof of it is his Summa 
Theologica, wherein, starting from the data of reve- 
lation, the Dominican Doctor raises up a sacred ca- 
thedral, for which metaphysics,—we had better say, 
the conception of being,—had furnished him the nec- 
essary material. 

I shall limit myself to the treatise De Incarnatione, 
found in the third part of the Summa, which in re- 
cent: years has had a brilliant commentator in Car- 
dinal Louis Billot (De Verbo Incarnato: Commen- 
tarius in Tertiam Partem S. Thomae). 

Faith teaches that the second Person of the Most 
Holy Trinity became man to redeem us from sin. 
Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, is the Man-God. In 
Him there are two natures and one Person. He 
suffered and died for us. 

Let us touch upon a few points and see how St. 
Thomas develops this theological treatise with the 
conception of being as a basis. 

Was the Incarnation necessary? It was, if divine 
justice was to be satisfied in a full and condign man- 
ner. Through sin being had offended Being. The 
gravity of an offense is measured by the dignity of 
the person offended; but as it was the infinite Being 
that had been offended, the offense was in a measure 


FAITH AND REASON 163 


infinite (quodammodo infinita). Therefore, an in- 
finite reparation was required of sinful man. The 
problem seemed insoluble: the finite being cannot 
make an infinite reparation. The Incarnation solves 
the difficulty through the reparation of the Man-God 
which proceeds from a Being of infinite dignity. 

But how are we to conceive the Hypostatic Union? 
In what manner can we admit a Man-God? God, 
says St. Thomas, is Being by essence. The essence, 
the nature of God is His very existence. In the 
creature, on the contrary, the nature or essence does 
not contain within itself the note of existence, which 
in no way changes nature, but makes it to subsist. 
Now God, Being, instead of creating a human na- 
ture subsisting by a limited existence proper to it, 
creates one which, assumed by the Word, subsists 
by the divine Existence. In Jesus Christ, then, we 
have two natures, the human and the divine; but 
only one existence and hence only one person,—the 
Existence and the Person of God. 

If human nature subsists by the existence of the 
Word, we understand how Jesus Christ could live, 
suffer, and die as man, and how at the same time 
His actions and sufferings had an infinite value. 
And it is by starting from the fact of the Hypostatic 
Union that St. Thomas solves all the questions of 
his treatise, which could not be fully understood 
except by one familiar with Thomistic metaphysics 


1644 THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 


and with its doctrine of being. The same can be 
said of the treatise De Trimiate and of all the 
other parts of the Summa Theologica. 

3. Finally, reason refutes the objections raised 
against faith. ‘This point, too, cannot be made clear 
without keeping in mind that the laws of rational 
thought cannot be repudiated by the laws of any 
reality whatsoever. To him who attempts to find 
contradictions in dogma, St. Thomas, far from an- 
swering with the unhistorical phrase, credo quia 
absurdum, shows that the absurdity does not exist 
except in our false interpretation of revealed truth. 
And even when there is question of the dominion 
of faith, he does not hesitate to use the process of 
reason and metaphysics, because these, though not 
perfect because they do not give us the whole of 
reality, are none the less valid because they are the 
assured principles of being, of reality. 

In the face of such a conception what value can 
the objections of present-day Rationalism have? 
When, for example, Idealism alleges that revelation 
is opposed to reason, we acknowledge that the diff- 
culty is insoluble from the viewpoint of modern 
philosophy. If our will or our thought creates 
everything, if there is nothing that is not an act of 
the thought immanent in us, it is clear that no reve- 
lation would be conceivable which would not be a 
creation of the subject, a manifestation of the sub- 


FAITH AND REASON 165 


ject to itself. However, if being is not created by 
us, but only known by us, if in its multiform reality 
it surpasses our mind, if our intellect is too feeble to 
acquire it completely and to exhaust it, what con- 
tradiction is there between reason and revelation? 
The latter, far indeed from being in antithesis to 
the former, cannot but be welcomed by it with de- 
light, and one and the other sibt mutuam opem 
ferunt, are mutually helpful in the attainment of 
reality, of God, of Being. 

It would be quite easy then to show that to the 
mind of St. Thomas, there was no opposition be- 
tween truth and truth, between metaphysics and 
dogma, between nature and grace, because as created 
reality was for him but a participation of being, so 
supernatural life could be nothing else than a fuller 
acquisition of reality, or of Being itself. For the 
great Doctor, “philosophy was not to be a provisional 
scaffolding for theology, destined to disappear when 
the edifice was completed; but (as Heitz expresses 
himself in a happy simile), it was to be considered 
rather as a portico, whose columns and main parts 
are carved in the solid and shining marble of evident 
certainty. To this portico of philosophy,—though 
having of itself a sufficient reason of being,—sacred 
theology adds a temple, making use of its own 
principles of construction, different from those used 
by the builders of the portico, and, because of their 


166 *THE THEOLOGY OF ST? THOMAS 


relatively obscure certainty, comparable to blocks of 
rough granite. Thus the original portico of rational 
knowledge becomes a part of, and the entrance to, 
the vast sanctuary of Christian wisdom.” 

Within the elegant portico, resplendent with the 
beauty of Greek style, and within the vast basilica, 
there shines in the night of time the bright lamps of 
Being, lighted respectively by rational thought and 
by the hand of the revealing God. 

When the night will have passed away and the 
brightness of the eternal day irradiates the minds of 
men, these lamps will be extinguished and their place 
taken by the one single intuition of the beatific 
vision, by means of which we shall exult in the 
contemplation of Being as He is (sicuti est). 


CONCLUSION 


Being as an ontological reality,—such is the clas- 
sic thesis of Thomism and of medieval philosophy 
generally. It was slowly elaborated during a pro- 
cess of continuous ripening. The genius of St. 
Thomas gave it all the development and finish of 
which it was susceptible, ensouling with it a world 
of discoveries and doctrines, and presenting several 
centuries of profound speculation in the organic 
unity of a system. 

All who wish to penetrate to the very heart of 
Thomism must ponder the thought of St. Thomas 
from this point of view, which, in my judgment, 
is the key to his whole system. Indeed, it would 
be highly profitable, especially to-day, to insist on 
this point, for it enables us to evaluate the work 
of this great thinker in its true meaning. Like- 
wise, if I mistake not, this same idea ought to make 
its influence felt also in the manuals and publications 
on Scholastic philosophy. For now and then, in the 
statement and proof of the various doctrines, they 
fail to arouse the feeling that these doctrines are 


as the notes of one musical composition, the cantos 
167 


168) (FHE THEOLOGY? OR SPO Nie 


of a single poem, the members of an organic whole, 
the development of one sole germ rich with an in- 
tense vitality. 

It is this concept that fixes the place of St. 
Thomas—as compared with that of his predecessors, 
contemporaries, and successors,—in the history of 
culture. 

Those who went before,—from the very dawn of © 
philosophic investigation down to his time,—now 
no longer appear to us in a tumult of theories, in a 
clash of ideas, as a chaotic group of individuals, 
but as representatives of a continuous preparation, 
culminating in the formation and magnificent flower- 
ing of the two great Summae of Aquinas. 

It was no mere caprice that led Leo XIII to 
choose St. Thomas from among his contemporaries 
and so many distinguished medieval philosophers as 
the teacher of Catholic schools. No one before 
or after him succeeded in recapitulating ancient and 
Christian thought in a synthesis so vigorous as that 
which underlies his philosophy of being. 

What is more, St. Thomas championed this phil- 
osophy with such depth and lucidity as to become 
its foremost standard-bearer and, therefore, the 
leading Catholic adversary of modern philosophic 
speculation, at least as it is being generally inter- 
preted. 

From the Middle Ages on, according to an opinion 


CONCLUSION 169 


quite common to-day in well nigh all philosophical 
schools, philosophy has been one continued effort to 
strike at and destroy the soul of Thomism. St. 
Thomas, though he never denied the rights of the 
subject, could not conceive an act of thought or will 
without a being that thinks and wills; consistently 
with his conception of being, he did not even dream 
of placing the center of the universe in an ego living 
within us, whose only reality would be its activity, 
and whose activity would not mean an ontological 
reality. Therefore, all modern and contemporary 
systems of philosophy declare an implacable war on 
the Angelic Doctor and his theory of being. It is 
the new conception of the world by Humanism and 
the Renaissance, which pits against being the glori- 
fication and divinization of the subject, 1. e., man con- 
sidered in himself or in his relation to nature. It is 
the Cogito, ergo sum of Réné Descartes, with a hint 
of the oneness of thought and being. It is Spinoza 
with his immanentistic method in philosophy. It is 
Berkeley, according to whom being is unthinkable 
except in relation to the thinking activity. It is 
Immanuel Kant with his synthesis a priort, or the 
subject that creates being. It is Fichte, Schelling, 
and Hegel who are inexorable in their desire to ob- 
literate the residues of being in Kantian philosophy, 
—the caput mortuum of the Critiques—so as to 
reduce all reality to the knowing subject. It is, 


p70} THE, THEOLOGY! Gh S iene 


not to mention others, the attempt of the post-Hegel- 
ian school in Italy, from Spaventa and Jaja to 
Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile, who seek to 
pulverize the last unexplained shreds of ontological 
reality and logically arrive at the thesis of the 
identification of history and philosophy, nay, of 
history and the history of philosophy. In “short, 
against the philosophy of bemg, modern philosophy, 
——as Gentile has well expressed it in his Teoria 
Generale del Pensiero come Atto Puro,—began to 
affirm “simply, with all discretion, this modest but 
pressing need, that thought be considered as some- 
thing, though later, in probing the concept of this 
need to the bottom, modern philosophy felt the 
necessity of affirming thought not simply as some- 
thing, as only an element and, so to speak, an 
appendage of reality, but rather as the totality or 
absolute Reality.” 

It is not my task here to attempt a critical ex- 
amination of modern thought.t. Nor do I wish to 
investigate its contributions to truth and how they 
can be assimilated by Thomism, according to which 

1] by no means accept such an interpretation of modern 
philosophy. As I have begun to show in my work on L’Anima 
dell Umanesimo e del Rinascimento (Milano, Societa Editrice 
“Vita e Pensiero,’ 1924, Vol. I, pp. 8900) and in my essay on 
La Storia della Filosofia Moderna e la Neoscolastica Italiana 
(ibid., 1925), the speculation developed from the end of the 


Middle Ages onward is orientated towards concreteness, and 
by this very fact differs from pre-modern thought, which is 


CONCLUSION 171 


also the domain of phenomena and the life of the 
subject, though not the all, are none the less a reality 
and belong to being. My one intention was to por- 
tray with scrupulous fidelity the soul of the Thomis- 
tic system, and to show how, as compared with later 
philosophies, it furnishes the key for the solution of 
the fundamental problem on which depends the fu- 
ture of philosophic thought. 

based on abstraction. The two processes, far from being 
mutually exclusive, can and must complement each other. 


This view is summarized in Fr. Zybura’s forthcoming book on 
Present-Day Thinkers and the New Scholasticism. 





INDEX 


Abélard, 59 

Absolute being, 83 sq. 

Abstraction, Process of, 56 
sq., 84 sq., 102 sq., 120 sqq., 
129, 133 sq., 159 

Accidents, 43, 62 

Act, 43, 61 

Actuality, Perfect, 76, 78, 83 

Actus essendi, 27 sq. 

Albert the Great, 3, 6 sq., 12, 
27, 59, 60, 142, 149 

Alexander of Hales, 59 

Aliquid, 64 

Analogy of being, 24, 71 

Anaxagoras, 75, 77 

Anselm, St., 36, 49 sq., 74, 85, 
146, 147 

Aristotelianism, 
sqq. 

Aristotle, 4 sqq., 8, 9, 10, 17, 
21, 20, 27, 20, 59, 63, 65, 
75, 76, 77, 85, 87, 88, 90, 
99, 114, 135, 145 

Arts, 124 

Attributes, Divine, 83 

Augustine, St., 4, 9 sq., 20 Sq., 
30 sq., 32, 59, 66, 77, 85, 89, 
90 

Augustinians, 4 

Augustinian theory of divine 
illumination, 143 sq. 

Averroés, 5, 148 


Christian, 4 


Averroism, 5 
Avicenna, 85 


Bacon, Roger, 4 

(Baeumker, iv 

Baumgartner, iv 

Beatitude, 107 sq., 161 
Becoming, 19, 43, 75 sqd., 94 


sq. 

Being, The idea of in Tho- 
mistic philosophy, viii, 14 
sqqd-, 22, 23 sqq., 39 sqq., 
99 sqq., 137 sqq. 

Berkeley, 169 

Bernard of Clairvaux, 85, 146 

illo le St od 

Bonaventure, St., 4, 144 


Canella, 54 

Categories, 62 

Causality, Principle of, 45; 
Proof from, 76 sq. 

Cause, 43 

Conceptualism, 52, 54 

Contemplative vs. active life, 
113 sqq. 

Contingence, 76, 78, 87 sq. 

Contradiction, Principle of, 45 

Co-Operation of God with 
His Creatures, 95 sq. 

Corpus Christi, Office for the 
Feast of, 13 


173 


174 


Creation, 86 sqq. 

Credere Deum—Deo—in 
Deum, 155 

“Credo, ut imtelligam,” 
sq. 

Croce, B., 50, 170 


146 


Dante, 13 

De Maria, 55 

De Ruggiero, 7 

Descartes, R., 169 

De Wulf, iv, 49 

Dogma, 141 sq. 

Double-truth theory, 148 sq., 
161 

Doubt, I51 

Dualism, 17, 65 sq., 70 sqq. 


Effect, 43 

Ehrle, Cardinal, 4 

End, 43 

Essence, 43, 61 

Ethics, The idea of being in, 
103 sqq. 

Eucken, R., 11 

Euclid, 145 

Evil, 66, 67, 77, 104 sq., 1009 

Excluded third, Principle of, 


45 
Existence, 43, 61, 64 


Faith and reason, 140 sqq. 

Fichte, 169 

First principles, 44 sqq. 

“Five ways for reaching 
God,” 74 sqq. 

Form, The Aristotelian doc- 
trine of, 18 sq., 21, 43 

Franciscan School, 4, 32 

Free-will, 5, 95 sq., 103, 109 
sqq. 


INDEX 


Garrigou-Lagrange, iv, vii, 
Vill, 99, 103 

Gentile, G., 2, 170 

God, 43, 60, 65, 66, 72, 73 
Sqq., 90 sq. 

God-Man, The, 163 sq. 

Goodness, 43, 63 sq., 65, 66, 
69, 70, 104 sq., 109 

Government, Divine, 92 sqq. 

Grabmann, M., iv, 13, 20, 73, 
82, 84, 85, 104 

Grace, 161 

Gregory IX, 6 


Happiness, Supreme, 107 

Harnack, Adolph, 7 

Hegel, 47, 169 

Heitz, Th., 3,°4,142,/147105 

Heraclitus, 75 

Hertling, G. von, 10 

Hilary of Poitiers,’ 85 

Historic sense, v sq. 

History, Knowledge of, 136 
sq. 

History of philosophy, v sqq. 

Hugh of St. Victor, 143, 144 

Humanism, 169 

Hypostatic Union, 163 


Idealism, 164 

Ideas, 99 sq. 

Identity, Principle of, 45 

Incarnation, 162 sq. 

Individuals, Knowledge of, 
125 sqq. 

Innate ideas, 34 

Intellect, Primacy of the, 106 
Sqq., I16 sqq. 

Intellectualism of St. Thomas, 
106 sqq.; Limits of, 118 sqq. 


INDEX 


Intentio prima, 57 
Intentiones secundae, 58 
Intuition, 119 sqq. 
Ipsum esse subsistens, 82 


Jesus Christ, 163 sq. 
John Damascene, 85 
Judgments, 100 sq. 


Kant, 47, 79, 81, 169 

Kilwardby, Richard, 6 

Knowledge, Origin of, 30 
sqq.; Validity of, 38 sqq.; 
Concrete, 127 sqq.; Of be- 
ing, 137 sqq. 


Laberthonniére, 135 
Lanfranc, 146 
Laws of thought, 122. 


~~Lemmens, 3 


Leo XIII, iv, 1, 168 

Lepidi, vii 

Liberatore, vii 

Life, 116 

Logic, The idea of being in, 
99 sqq. 

frist ot 13 


Maimonides, Moses, 92 

Masnovo, A., iv 

Matter and form, 43, 68 

Mattiussi, P., 112 

Mercier, D., 121 

Metaphysical essence of God, 
SI sqq. 

Metaphysics, 26 sqq., 37 sq, 
43 sqq., 60 sqq. 

Mill, John Stuart, 50 

‘Monism, 72 

(Motives of credibility, 156 

Mysteries of religion, 140 sq. 


175 


Neo-Platonism, 32, 66 
Nominalism, 50 sqq., 54 


Ontological proof for the ex- 
istence of God, 36 sq., 80 sq. 

Ontology, 37 

Opinion, I51 


Pantheism, 71 

Parmenides, 75 

Person, 63 

Peter Damian, 145 sq. 

Phenomenalism, 72 

Philosophy in its relation to 
theology, 157 sqq. 

E1atO, 0,4 Lae basemen 0, 
32, 65," 75, 76; 77; 30,90, 
145 

Platonism, 3 sq., 9 sq., I7 sq. 

Plotinus, 30, 32 

Porphyry, 51 

Positivism, 50 

Post-Hegelian School, 170 

(Potency, 43, 61, 84 

Principium individuationis, 55 
sqq. 

Providence, Divine, 92 saq., 
136 

Pseudo-Areopagite, 85 

Psychology, The idea of being 
in, IOI sqq. 

Pythagoras, 145 


Quidditas, 57 


Ratiocination, IOI, 122 
Rationabile obsequium, 156 
Realism, Exaggerated, 52; 
Moderate, 52 sq., 54, 58 sq, 
105; Christian, 135 
Reality, 66 sq., 69 


176 


Reginaldo da Piperno, 13 

Res, 64 

Revelation, 153 sq., 160 

Richard of St. Victor, 143 

Rolfes, E., 27 

Roscellin, 49 sq. 

Rosmini, Ant., 47 

Rousselot, P., 106, 107, 125, 
158 


Schelling, 169 

Schiffini, S., 81 

Scholastic method, 9 

Science, 123 sq. 

Scotus, John Duns, 108 

Seeberg, 5 

Sense perception, 34 sq. 41 
sq., 128 sq., 159 sq. 

Sertillanges, iv, 6, 31 

Siger de Brabant, 5, 148, 161 

Socrates, 16.°sq., 20) )21.. 77; 
129 sq. 

Sophists, The, 15 

Soul, 62, 101 sqq., 117 

Speculation, 109 

Spinoza, 169 

Substance, 43, 62, 65, 80 

Summa Theologica, I, 162 

Synthesis, The Thomistic, vii 
sq., I sqq., 8 sqq., 22, 77, 80, 
86, 89, 142 

Synthetic method, iv sq. 


Taine, 50 
Taylor, A. E., ii 
Teleology, 123 sq. 


INDEX 


Tempier, Stephen, 6 

Theodicy, 28, 73 sqq. 

Theology, 74, 156 sq.; Being 
in, 140 sqq. 

Thought, 117 

“Thought of thought,” 72, 75 
sq. 

Tocco, G. da, 13 

Transcendental properties of 
being, 63 sq., 69 sq., 71 

Trinity, The, 140 sq. 

Truth, 20, 21, 30 sqq., 43, 63 
sq., 66, 69, 70, 83 


Unity, 64, 68 

Universal Mobilism, 135 
Universals, 33 sq., 49 sqq. 
Unum, 64, 68, 83 


‘Value-Judgments, 103 sq. 
Verbum mentis, 34.8q. 
Virtue, 105 

Vision, Beatific, 161 


Will, see Free-Will 

William of Auvergne, 4, 143 

William of Auxerre, 4, 146 

William of Champeaux, 146 

William of Moerbeke, 9 

Willmann, O., 1 

Windelband, 50, 54 

World, The, Was it created 
from eternity? QI sq. 


Zamboni, G., 37, 39, 46 
Zigliara, vii, Vili 


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